PM Magazine, August 2024

Public Safety for Residents with Disabilities 12

Lessons Learned from Uvalde 16 Bracing for “The Big One” 30

Emergency Management & Public Safety

Leonard Matarese, ICMA-CM Managing Partner, Center for Public Safety Management

Read more on page 12.

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FEATURES

12

Public Safety for Residents with Disabilities from My Perspective

Challenges and opportunities for local government public safety to assist disabled persons in our communities

Leonard Matarese, ICMA-CM

16

Uvalde Failures Underscore the Importance of Preparedness

Ensuring your community is prepared for a mass shooting or other critical incident

Sarah C. Peck

22

Safer Streets

Declaring a traffic safety emergency

Scott Chadwick

26

Navigating the Aftermath of Officer-involved Shootings

Reflections on my experience and recommendations for policies and procedures to help along the way

Jeff Weckbach 30

Bracing for “The Big One”

West coast efforts to strengthen links between public works and emergency response offer lessons for local governments everywhere.

Sarah Sieloff and Daniele Spirandelli, PhD

Do Solutions to Crime Need to Be Complicated?

Cities can reduce crime by focusing on problems and dismantling crime opportunities.

Shannon J. Linning, Thomas Carroll, ICMA-CM, Daniel W. Gerard, and John E. Eck

When a disaster strikes, there’s no time for

discipline

Jay C. Juergensen

Saving Lives through Innovative Gun Violence Prevention Strategies

Leveraging new technologies and community partnerships

Reading this month’s PM article on the Uvalde mass shooting failures is a sobering reminder that even if local law enforcement had responded appropriately, children still would have been killed or injured that day. Local government leaders often feel frustrated and inadequate because one individual, intent on causing violence, who enters a school, store, office building, or other public space, can bring so much death and destruction to a community. For most cities, counties, and towns, the focus remains on preparation and response aimed at mitigating loss of life. With the advent of “big data,” AI, and machine learning tools, we are finally beginning to glimpse what prevention strategies might become possible over the next few years. Here are just a few examples:

MARC A. OTT

is CEO/Executive Director of ICMA, Washington, D.C.

In spite of potential privacy conflicts, more individuals seem ready to consider technologybased methods of detection, investigation, and prevention of active shooter situations. Former Navy Seals have launched a company that uses enhanced video security to detect a gun or suspicious behavior for use in schools and other public spaces.1 The AI technology immediately alerts a professional who determines if it’s a credible threat before alerting local law enforcement.

Public Management (PM) (USPS: 449-300) is published monthly by ICMA (the International City/County Management Association) at 777 North Capitol Street. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002-4201. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C., and at additional mailing offices. The opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ICMA.

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Creating and Supporting Thriving Communities

ICMA’s vision is to be the leading association of local government professionals dedicated to creating and supporting thriving communities throughout the world. It does this by working with its more than 13,000 members to identify and speed the adoption of leading local government practices and improve the lives of residents. ICMA offers membership, professional development programs, research, publications, data and information, technical assistance, and training to thousands of city, town, and county chief administrative officers, their staffs, and other organizations throughout the world.

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The company has over 400 clients and says it has led to over a dozen arrests. Several other companies have developed similar technologies.

Some communities are exploring social media monitoring technologies powered by AI to spot posts from shooters who announce their plans online. Monitoring extends well beyond public-facing platforms like Instagram to sites like 4Chan and Twitch. One company said its AI platform spotted a credible threat online that led to an arrest (the person specifically described details of his planned attack).2 Officers in Buffalo are equipped with packets from the crime analysis department of social media posts that include photos of teens brandishing guns.3 When officers approach families about the online content, often parents are unaware that their children had access to guns. The International Olympic Committee is also using AI to monitor social media platforms for attacks against athletes and officials. A number of gun violence risk assessment models have been developed and are being tested by local governments in major metropolitan areas. The models feed in dozens of attributes of potential shooters, including demographic and psychographic details such as bullying or being bullied and suicidal tendencies. Again, the data comes from a wide range of sources, including

2023–2024

ICMA Executive Board

PRESIDENT Lon Pluckhahn*

Deputy City Manager Vancouver, Washington

PRESIDENT-ELECT

Tanya Ange*

County Administrator

Washington County, Oregon

PAST PRESIDENT

Jeffrey Towery

City Manager McMinnville, Oregon

VICE PRESIDENTS

International Region

Rebecca Ryan

General Manager

Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional

Council, New South Wales, Australia

Colin Beheydt

City Manager

Bruges, Belgium

Doug Gilchrist

City Manager

Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada

With the advent of “big data,” AI, and machine learning tools, we are finally beginning to glimpse what prevention strategies might become possible over the next few years.

school records, crime reports, and social media posts. The computing power of AI can take millions of data points in real time and make predictions that can then be used by local governments to initiate interventions. This might include police, but also social services and other forms of engagement focused on evaluating the threat potential and determining how best to address the potential threat and keep the community safe.

Of course, engaging the community in considering any and all preventive strategies remains a top priority. Local government leaders have done much in recent years to begin to change the perception of law enforcement from the old “you call, we haul” mentality to one of partnership. While I was city manager in Austin, Police Chief Art Acevado was masterful at engaging not only community leaders and residents but also leaders and institutions within academia in problem identification and mitigation. He also worked with regional partners to create the Austin Regional

Midwest Region

Corri Spiegel* Manager in Transition

Michael Sable* City Manager Maplewood, Minnesota

Jeffrey Weckbach

Township Administrator Colerain Township, Ohio

Mountain Plains Region

Kenneth Williams** City Manager Beaumont, Texas

Dave Slezickey* City Manager The Village, Oklahoma

Pamela Davis

Assistant City Manager Boulder, Colorado

Northeast Region

Scott W. Colby Jr.

Assistant Town Manager Windsor, Connecticut

Dennis Enslinger

Deputy City Manager Gaithersburg, Maryland

Steve Bartha* Town Manager Danvers, Massachusetts

Intelligence Center, which brings together multiple agencies to analyze information and disseminate actionable intelligence throughout the region.

In addition, local government and community leaders can continue to do anything and everything to model and maintain civility in our polarized communities, reducing the rhetoric of violence.4

I shared some additional information and resources last year5 though sadly, gunrelated deaths in the United States totaled 43,163 in 2023, with more than 630 from mass shootings. We know we have to do better. Leveraging new technologies, along with community partnerships and innovative police and social services strategies, will save lives.

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 https://www.axios.com/2024/06/28/zeroeyes-gunsmass-shootings

2 https://www.babelstreet.com/blog/ai-powered-socialmedia-monitoring-helps-prevent-mass-shootings

3 https://local12.com/news/local/tale-two-queencities-buffalo-police-watch-social-media-reduce-gunviolence-weapon-weapons-shootings-shots-firedofficers-resources-community-help-arrest-arrestedstrategy-teenagers-teens-children-peacemakers-supportmentoring-buffalo-cincinnati

4 https://extension.unr.edu/publication. aspx?PubID=5268#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20 exercising%20civility,attempt%20to%20avoid%20 important%20discussions

5 https://icma.org/articles/pm-magazine/letter-ceoedpriority-one-local-government-leaders-keeping-ourchildren-safe

Southeast Region

Valmarie Turner*

Deputy City Manager Fairfax, Virginia

Jorge Gonzalez*

Village Manager Village of Bal Harbour, Florida

Eric Stuckey City Administrator Franklin, Tennessee West Coast Region

Pamela Antil* City Manager Encinitas, California

Jessi Bon City Manager Mercer Island, Washington

Nat Rojanasathira**

Assistant City Manager Monterey, California

* ICMA-CM

** ICMA Credentialed Manager Candidate

ICMA CEO/Executive Director Marc Ott

Managing Director, Lynne Scott lscott@icma.org

Brand Management, Marketing, and Outreach; Director, Equity & Social Justice and Membership Marketing

Senior Managing Editor Kerry Hansen khansen@icma.org

Senior Editor Kathleen Karas kkaras@icma.org

Graphics Manager Delia Jones djones@icma.org

Design & Production picantecreative.com

AUGUST

How the Public Sector is Leading AI Adoption in Service Delivery

August 14 | Webinar

Strategic Planning in a Time of Change: Plays to Build Capacity in Local Government

August 22 | Webinar

Capital Improvement Plans: Understanding the Fundamentals

August 28 | Webinar

SEPTEMBER

Cybersecurity Readiness: How to Protect Local Government Assets September 3 | Webinar

Ethics at the Helm: Staying the Course Despite Unethical Elected Officials September 12 | Free Coaching Webinar

ICMA Annual Conference September 21-25 | Pittsburgh/ Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

OCTOBER

Data-Driven Decision Making — Fall 2024

October 8 | Certificate Program

Navigating Workplace Challenges: Strategies to Maximize the Performance of Difficult Employees

October 17 | Free Coaching Webinar

February 26 – 28, 2025

Denver, Colorado (Adams County)

April 2 – 4, 2025

Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Milwaukee County)

ICMA will host these events to help public administrators innovate and adapt their leadership practices, management strategies, and operations in the name of more resilient and equitable outcomes for their work and their communities. Collectively called the Local Government Reimagined Conferences, each event will have a unique theme and focus.

Political Neutrality in an Era of Polarization

BY JESSICA COWLES

ICMA CODE OF ETHICS Established 1924 YEARS

Sharing my journey to political neutrality, a foundational value for the profession

The lead-up to November’s U.S. federal election and the recent events of July 13 bring into sharp focus the issue of ideological politics and the real challenges that the local government management profession faces in our commitment to political neutrality.

The manager’s very public job is difficult in the best of circumstances. Ratchet up the political dialogue, and it becomes nearly impossible to accomplish even the most fundamental tasks for the organization. The budget, for example, can become a blueprint for those in campaign mode to make political statements that may be inaccurate or incorrect.

Electoral politics, bitter campaigns, the general lack of civility, and social media that feeds this frenzy are but a few examples that impact communities. It is a slog season and local government leaders are to be commended for rising to the occasion time and time again.

My Personal Political Neutrality Journey

I have been public service oriented for as long as I can remember. Shortly after I celebrated my eighteenth birthday, I became an election poll worker in my hometown of Bridgeport, Michigan, USA. My 12-hour day came with a small stipend, and in retrospect, gave me a great appreciation for the workings of democracy at the local level.

disillusioned with the partisan nature of many things and the lack of civility.

My two years in graduate school in North Carolina were my much-needed salve. When I learned about nonpolitical local government professionals managing an organization, I was intrigued. My MPA professors exposed us to the North Carolina City/County Management Association conference. I graduated from that program amid an economic downtown, and when local governments could hire again, I became an analyst. I embraced political neutrality as a professional value, then and now. I live in Maryland and have had the designation of “unaffiliated” as a voter for nearly 15 years. The state has a closed primary system, so this means I willingly do not have a right to participate in the process. For me, it is the correct choice; others may choose something different.

I have worked in and around places you could describe as blue, purple, or red with the organizations themselves just as varied with their own cultures. In the four years before my ICMA tenure, I was a town manager in a community with local, nonpartisan elections every two years. The clerk who administered those elections was the manager’s direct report. The town even had one election cycle where the office of mayor was determined by a single vote. (Of course, there was an automatic recount.) It happens!

JESSICA COWLES is ethics director at ICMA (jcowles@icma.org).

It was 23 years ago, in 2001, and the summer before my senior year of undergraduate studies at Michigan State University, that I contemplated my future career path. The September 11 terrorist attacks provided me with clarity in the aftermath. I graduated three months later and moved to work as a legislative assistant for a member of Congress from Michigan on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

I worked for seven years in and around the federal government before I pursued graduate studies in public administration. This experience shaped me: I saw electoral politics first hand, as well as the never-ending, expensive campaigns for public office and how easy it was to vilify those with a different perspective. I became

What does political neutrality look like from a manager’s perspective? There are many things that play in the highlight reel of one’s life. One of my moments is from my time as a manager in setting the tone for the organization. Federal partisan politics in the 2016 election cycle were divisive, and an employee of mine remarked that they had no idea how I voted. I still savor that moment of success in my commitment to political neutrality.

Finding Meaning in the Work

Those newly elected on the governing body may have their issues with how the organization is led. A member’s political activity should never be one of those reasons! Tenet 7 of the Code of Ethics directs members to “refrain from all political activities which undermine public confidence in professional administrators” and includes specific examples in guidelines on governing

body elections, running for office, elections generally, form of government and other matters needing member assistance, and personal advocacy of issues. Political neutrality keeps managers operating above the fray.

This tenet is a reminder that a member should never be in full-time service to a local government and be an elected official at the same time, even if this elected position is in a different community.

I embraced political neutrality as a professional value, then and now.

Local elections can bring out the seemingly worst in people. The phrase, “vote for me and I will fire the city manager,” comes to mind. Though this candidate likely needs a majority of governing body members to do so, that manager’s reputation can be damaged all the same and public trust eroded. Another example of this would be if the newly elected council views the manager as part of the former elected leader’s team.

These kinds of negative experiences can shake your faith in humanity to do the right thing. I have been there. My perspective is that these times demand two characteristics: political neutrality and resilience.

We see former elected officials become managers by eschewing partisan politics or permanently retired managers running for elected office. Both situations can be okay with the appropriate consideration and action. Former elected officials who are now managers in service to a local government—whether it is on a full-time, parttime, or interim basis—must follow all 12 tenets of the

Code, including Tenet 7 on political activities. Members who are permanently retired from the profession are required to adhere to Tenet 1 (the commitment to professional management and democracy) and Tenet 3 (honesty and integrity). Former managers and deputies/assistants who want to run for elected office or engage in political activity in the community in which they recently served should refrain from using their former official title, always demonstrate respect for their successor, and be accurate and fair in their presentation of information. ICMA senior advisors should be sure to discuss their plans with their state association president and ICMA before taking any action.

I look to the first version of the Code in 1924 to provide guidance on why this profession is a resilient one: “A City Manager will be known by his works, many of which may outlast him, and regardless of personal popularity or unpopularity, he should not curry favor or temporize but should in a far-sighted way aim to benefit the community of today and of posterity.” This is why managers choose this path among all others and have the tools to weather political storms when needed.

Remember that you are not alone in facing these challenges to political neutrality. ICMA members can contact me for confidential advice or reach out to their regional director or senior advisor for professional and personal support.

The Pressure of Pretty

How unspoken beauty standards hold women back and how to redefine the narrative

Women can do anything. As long as we’re pretty. Not too pretty, but pretty enough. Because too pretty is threatening. I didn’t make the rules and neither did you. We just live them.

I consider myself an expert on beauty because I am facially disfigured. A childhood dog attack left me scarred and lopsided. And we can only understand the true power of something if we first experience its opposite. For example, what do we know of health if we’ve never been sick? What do we know of connection if we’ve never been lonely?

The best leaders see the world not as it is, but how it could be.

Empathy isn’t taught, it’s lived. And I know the power of beauty because I’ve lived at the periphery of its force.

Beauty isn’t an achievement or contribution. It fades under seasons of stress, sickness, and age. It’s a slippery alter at best and destructive at worst. It sends our children—especially our daughters—into the jaws of bullying, eating disorders, addiction, and suicide. And yet, we never talk about it. We let it rule us and we tell ourselves we can be anything, as long as we’re pretty. We judge the clothes, hair, body, and faces of other women. Sometimes our comments are cruel and sometimes they’re kind, but either way, we’re constantly talking about how women look. And in doing so, we reduce and minimize ourselves and other women into a prison that holds us all back from living our truest gifts. The best leaders see the world not as it is, but how it could be. And if the world today is fixated on linking the value of a woman to her physical appearance, here are a few small ways to recreate the narrative:

BY MELISSA WILEY

Spend time with people who value and compliment you in areas outside of your appearance. The list can include old friends, animals, or children. We trust the opinions of children and dogs because they naturally connect to good energy. Find others who connect to your heart, and align your conversations around ideas and dreams instead of gossip related to the physical appearance of others. Reduce social media use. Avoid viewing AI-generated images or images centered on the appearance of a celebrity. Viewing such pictures can cultivate feelings of low self-worth and judgment toward others. Avoid reading all negative comments, especially those directed at the appearance of other women. Reading negative comments normalizes the content and increases its space and power. Instead use social media as a tool to compliment, uplift, and celebrate others.

Spend time in nature. Witnessing the imperfect beauty of nature centers our minds on a truer experience—we are all imperfect, every creature, every tree. And yet, we all add value. Spending time alone in nature is the fastest way to discover your own truth and to explore how you wish to live outside of the world’s standards.

Examine your desire for exercise. Does it center on weight loss? If it does, consider spending a few days a week in gratitude for the body you have now and all it can do.

Seek activities that give your life meaning outside of anything related to your physical appearance (such as clothes shopping, getting your nails done, exercising to lose weight). Perhaps you’ve always wanted to play a musical instrument, write, or draw. Give yourself time to explore passions that have nothing to do with external appearance.

Ask yourself what bothers you most about the physical appearance of others. What disgusts you?

Explore the source of your own visceral feelings. Gut reactions often stem from your own childhood expectations or criticisms. What triggers you is often the source of your own hurt. Go to that source and heal yourself.

True beauty comes from the love we give and receive. The rest is hardly worth our time. But until the world changes, the most revolutionary thing we can do is to love ourselves and our daughters through the confines of physical appearance and into our greatest gifts. Into a world we could fundamentally and forever change if we pushed back on pretty.

MELISSA WILEY is deputy town administrator of Erie, Colorado, USA.

Design Thinking and the Consumer Experience

Creativity is today’s currency for success.

Right now, jot down at least two policies or practices that exist in your organization that are directed at either internal or external customers that you believe no longer add value and are cumbersome to navigate. Go ahead, I’ll wait. That didn’t take you too long, did it? Imagine asking your front-line employees to respond to that question, or your customers, for that matter. My guess is they would identify way more than two policies or practices that they consider as relics of the past.

PATRICK

IBARRA is a former city manager with more than 15 years in local government and the last 22 years as a consultant. He and his consulting firm, the Mejorando Group, are passionate about unleashing human potential (patrick@ gettingbetter allthetime.com).

Ours has become an “experience economy” in which people have moved from passive consumption of products or services to active participation in the process. Recognizing this shift, many companies now invest in the delivery of experiences—what I refer to as the Amazon-ification of retailing. This process has come to be known as design thinking, and governments need to pay more attention to it.

Design thinking is a “next practice,” a methodology that infuses innovative activities with a human-centered design principle powered by a thorough understanding of what people want and need and what they like or dislike about the way a particular service is provided. David Kelley of IDEO, a pioneer in the field of design thinking, asserts that “design thinking is a process for creative problem solving that starts with people and their needs.”

BY PATRICK IBARRA

levels but also at the emotional level. Ask yourself, are you in the cost or value business? How do your residents feel about their community? How do they feel about their government? What touches them? What motivates them? Increasingly, your residents think of themselves as active participants in the process of community building.

Experiences in government are not delivered by elected officials or chief administrators but on the spot by front-line staff—at a counter, on the phone, in the field, or online.

Ultimately, these front-line personnel have the most power in the organization as they interact with customers one on one. As they deliver a service, they can either hijack the process or they can highlight and strengthen the jurisdiction’s brand. By the way, your agency’s brand isn’t its logo but its reputation, and there are several brands that exist within your agency—employer, place to invest, place to live, and the list goes on and on.

“The key is starting with customers and working backward.”

—Jeff Bezos

This is as important in government as it is in business. It has become evident that functional benefits alone are no longer sufficient to capture resident behavior and preference and create strong communities. People interact with their governments not only at the utility and cognitive

More and more, a range of government services are provided online. Ask yourself how simple it is for your customers to pay for a traffic ticket, for candidates to apply for a job, or for business investors to submit plans for review by your development services department? How often are you asking questions about ease and speed not of those who are delivering it, but those who are using it? What is your e-commerce strategy? (And don’t ask your IT department to develop it.) Your website isn’t a technology tool, but instead is a marketing device and commerce platform for customers to transact business 24/7.

Keep the following mindset at the forefront as you review not only the portfolio of your agency’s services but in the way

they are provided: determine which are routine and transactional (i.e., cashier) and which require a more consultative approach (i.e., concierge). As you evaluate your delivery of services, use this as a gauge: how easily, accessibly, and reliably are they being provided?

In designing a service, governments typically start with the constraint of what will fit within the framework of the existing service model. All too often, government agencies and staffers fail to keep in mind that they are not the audience for the program or service they are delivering, so their lack of empathy for the actual consumer affects the design of the service or program. Moreover, because government service-delivery systems are designed for efficiency, new ideas tend to be incremental, predictable, and easy for other governments to emulate, which has given rise to an overreliance on best practices.

Design thinking is a way to get past those roadblocks to innovation. Here are some

ideas for a design-thinking game plan for government:

• Transition your workplace culture from one that values conformity toward the kind of creative culture that is essential to generating innovative ideas. To be creative, a workplace does not have to be kooky and crazy, with skateboards and free food. What is needed is an environment in which people can experiment and take risks—smart, prudent, and thoughtful risk taking.

• Seek input from “unfocus” groups in which a range of consumers (including your own employees who are customers of your internal support functions, like finance, HR, IT, legal, and procurement) and designthinking experts are assembled in a workshop format to explore a new concept around a particular topic. The power of this type of format is that participants engage in an active, collaborative exercise.

• Acknowledge that technology, by itself, does not necessarily result in a better customer experience. Visit your agency’s website and experience firsthand the process, and likely the frustration, of signing up as a new utility customer or accessing a public record. Designers of purely technology-based solutions rarely factor in the consumer experience.

Opportunities are endless for the public sector to pursue design thinking and dramatically improve the delivery of services or programs, whether it’s obtaining a building permit, registering for a recreation program, or paying for property taxes.

We are in the midst of a significant change in how we think about the role of residents as consumers. Government staff and officials must become more comfortable with the erosion of the boundary between themselves and the public. It’s vital that public-sector leaders integrate design thinking into those areas that touch their residents’ lives, and more specifically, their needs.

PUBLIC SAFETY FOR RESIDENTS WITH DISABILITIES from My Perspective

Challenges and opportunities for local government public safety to assist disabled persons in our communities

One second. That’s how long it took to join me the ranks of the 42.5 million Americans who have some form of disability, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a disability as “any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitations) and interact with the world around them (participation limitations).” There are many types of disabilities, such as those that affect a person’s movement, vision, thinking, remembering, learning, communicating, hearing, mental health, or social relationships.

Five years ago, I fell at home and broke my neck, resulting in me being left as a quadriplegic. I had gotten up at night to use the bathroom, stumbled on a quarter-inch threshold to the room, and fell forward. I raised my hands to break my fall, which prevented me from hitting my head, but in doing so, my neck snapped from the whiplash, breaking vertebrae front and back. My spinal cord was bruised, not severed, so I have limited use of one hand. So, I can type, dictate, and use my power wheelchair. (Two-thirds of emergency room visits for injuries at home occur in the bathroom.)

After my lengthy hospital stay and rehabilitation therapy, I came home to get used to my new lifestyle and my new mobile transportation in a power

wheelchair, which I navigate with a single joystick. I have a wheelchair van, which my wife drives to take me to medical appointments and all other activities.

Once getting mobile, I began to understand the difficulties that physically disabled people face, and as an experienced public safety manager and city manager, I began to better understand the challenges that local governments face in meeting the needs of disabled residents.

Mobility Issues

Some of those challenges are simple and obvious, such as handicap parking. While mandated by most municipal codes and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements, it became clear to me very quickly that enforcement of regulations governing the use of handicap parking spaces by non-disabled persons is often lax or nonexistent. As a former police officer, I can honestly say that handicap parking space enforcement was not high on the list of most patrol officers.

But some communities in the United States are using volunteers to enforce regulations. Portland, Oregon; Novi, Michigan; and Austin, Texas, use trained volunteers who actively patrol parking lots and cite violators.

The ADA has very specific requirements that govern the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines (PROWAG). For example, ramps and curb ramps are required along accessible routes to span changes in level greater than half an inch.1

BY LEONARD MATARESE, ICMA-CM

One obstacle that wheelchair users and persons needing canes or crutches face is sidewalks with even relatively minor cracks. It makes traveling on the sidewalks difficult and dangerous for even able-bodied citizens. Most cities have regulations regarding the condition of sidewalks, but these often are not aggressively enforced. Similarly, the sidewalk curb cuts that are mandated by ADA requirements are oftentimes out of compliance due to poor implementation, or in colder conditions, shifting substrate. While half an inch may not seem like much to a non-disabled person, I can assure you that it can seem like a mountain to a wheelchair-bound person. Managers would be well advised to ensure that public works routinely inspect curb cuts and sidewalks to avoid litigation or penalties due to non-compliance. Remember my quarter-inch bathroom threshold!

Monitoring

Some communities have a proactive approach to monitoring the well-being of disabled persons. One thing that comes to mind is the number of disabled people and elderly people who live alone that no one checks on. Belton, Texas, USA, established the “RU OK” program, a free service that checks on individuals living alone with special needs.2 Participants receive a weekly call at a prearranged time, and if they don’t answer the phone,

police officers are immediately sent to their home. As of today, that program has saved 16 lives.

Registries

Localities have used registries to identify and locate people with disabilities by asking them or their caregivers to voluntarily enter information into a registry such as Smart911 (smart911. com), designed to identify individuals who may require special assistance during emergencies. Smart911 is a secure, national database supported by fees paid by public agencies. The services are available to anyone, but they are especially of value for individuals who selfidentify as having special needs. Emergency response personnel use this information to make better decisions and improve response time, and municipalities can sign up for advanced services that enable them to know who lives in their community that might require additional assistance in the case of an emergency. Several disability and health programs in the United States are now encouraging people with disabilities to sign up for Smart911 or similar location-specific registries, such as those found in Decatur, Georgia;3 Alexandria, Virginia;4 and Paradise Valley, Arizona.5

Empowering Individuals

Cities and counties should empower individuals with disabilities to advocate for their rights, participate in decision-making processes, and become active members of their communities. This can be achieved through training, leadership development,

While half an inch may not seem like much to a non-disabled person, I can assure you that it can seem like a mountain to someone who is wheelchair-bound.

This need not be a full-time assignment and can be in addition to other duties. The 50-employee requirement includes both full- and part-time employees and members of the organization in all departments. The ADA requires compliance not just for employees but for anyone who interacts or could potentially interact with the state or local government.

Summary

and opportunities for civic engagement and selfadvocacy. Invest in research and development of assistive technologies that enhance independence, mobility, communication, and daily living skills for individuals with disabilities. This includes devices such as mobility aids, communication devices, sensory aids, and smart home automation systems.

For example, people like me who have use of one hand (often seen in stroke victims) find it very difficult to hold and read books or pamphlets. Having local government literature on tablets available at city hall and other municipal facilities can allow disabled residents to access important information independently.

The ADA Coordinator

The ADA requires that a state or local government with 50 or more employees designate an employee responsible for coordinating compliance with ADA requirements.6

This obviously includes the role of public safety agencies in interacting with the local government, specifically public safety departments. In this article, we have talked about the ways that these agencies can provide additional assistance to persons with disabilities that they serve. To comply with the ADA requirement, there are specific requirements to adopt and distribute public notice about the provisions of the ADA to persons who are interested in utilizing government services, including public safety activities.

The ADA coordinator in even the smallest municipality can serve as the go-to person to ensure that all agencies within the local government are doing their best to meet the needs described in the ADA for not just employees but the public that the local government serves. This is especially true in dealing with public safety agencies who, rightfully so, have their primary focus on delivering quality emergency response services. A best practice would be to have one person within each of the public safety agencies attuned to the needs of the ADA and regular communications with the coordinator.

I have tried to point out just a few of the areas in which local government can provide additional assistance to its residents who suffer from a wide range of disabilities. Obviously, I have focused on those areas that I personally have some experience in. Clearly, there are many dozens more issues that the local public safety departments can explore and ultimately implement that will make a difference in the lives of disabled citizens receiving their services.

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 https://www.access-board.gov

2 https://www.beltontexas.gov/ departments/police_department/ru_ok_ senior_program.php

3 https://www.decaturga.com/fire/page/ smart-911

4 https://www.alexandriava.gov/Smart911

5 https://www.yourvalley.net/paradisevalley-independent/stories/alert-paradisevalley-expands-smart911-service,109133?

6 https://archive.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/ chap2toolkit.htm

LEONARD MATARESE, ICMA-CM, ICMA Life Member, was the founder of ICMA public safety consulting services in 2004, which has subsequently evolved into the Center for Public Safety Management (CPSM), the exclusive provider of public safety technical assistance for ICMA (cpsm.us). Matarese is currently a managing partner of CPSM. (Lmatarese@cpsm.us)

CPSM senior associates who contributed to this article:

• Matt Gustafson, retired deputy fire chief, Sonoma County, California, USA

• Mike Iacona, retired fire chief/ director, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

• Gene Ellis, retired police chief and assistant city manager, Belton, Texas, USA

ICMA’s exclusive provider of public safety technical assistance!

In 2004, the International City-County Management Association (ICMA) organized a new service for city managers to assist with police and fire issues, known as “Consulting Services.”

In 2014, the Center for Public Safety Management, LLC was launched, offering expanded assistance on optimizing dispatch, police, fire, EMS and Homeland Security services.

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Uvalde Failures

Underscore the Importance of Preparedness

BY SARAH C. PECK

Ensuring your community is prepared for a mass shooting or other critical incident

The tragic school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, USA, on May 24, 2022, revealed three mass shooting-related vulnerabilities facing many of our communities:

1. Many law enforcement agencies lack the specialized active shooter training needed to effectively respond to a mass shooting.

2. The nearest trauma center may be located too far from an incident, or lack the surge capacity, to provide urgently needed medical care to injured victims.

3. Many communities lack an emergency plan to provide the specialized services that victims and families need immediately following a mass shooting (and the weeks, months, and years that follow).

As a local government leader, you are uniquely positioned to ensure your first responders are trained and equipped to effectively respond to a mass shooting, and that your community is prepared to provide life-saving medical care and victim services. This article poses questions for you to consider and provides resources you can use to prepare your community for a mass shooting or other critical incident.

What Can We Learn from Uvalde?

The Uvalde shooting demonstrates the loss of life that can result when law enforcement officials fail to perform their duties. In that incident, officers arrived at the school before the shooter entered the building. They failed to stop him, which allowed the

A police officer visits a memorial at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, created to honor the victims killed in the 2022 school shooting.

shooter to access an unlocked classroom. Armed officers waited outside the classroom for an agonizing 77 minutes while the shooter fired at children and teachers trapped inside. As a result, 19 children and two adults died, 17 others were physically injured, and a community was traumatized.

A U.S. Department of Justice report on the Uvalde response described significant and systemic law enforcement failures.1 Among the findings: the officers failed to follow the protocol established 25 years ago after the Columbine school shooting, namely that the first responding officers must act immediately to stop the killing rather than wait

for backup. Additionally, the officers in Uvalde failed to properly identify the incident as an active shooter attack. They failed to establish incident or unified command. There were significant communication failures, including radios that were not inter-operational, a requirement since 9/11. Selfdeployed officers from other agencies parked their vehicles in the road and outside the school, blocking access to ambulances and emergency vehicles and preventing them from reaching injured victims.

To be clear, all mass shootings are chaotic and deadly. An investigation commissioned by the city of Uvalde found that the

“I said to our community after Uvalde that if the same scenario were to occur in Nashville, our officers were going in.”

— Chief John Drake, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department

Uvalde officers responded in good faith. Certainly, they risked their own lives to save the lives of students and their teachers. However, both the DOJ report and the city’s report noted inadequate training and the lack of coordination between responding agencies as significant factors in the failed response. As a result, lives that might have been saved were lost.

It is tempting to dismiss Uvalde as an isolated incident. But the law enforcement response to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in Parkland, Florida, USA, on February 14, 2018, also suffered from inadequate training.2 In fact, this vulnerability may be more

Billy Hathorn, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

widespread than is generally understood. According to John Curnutt, associate director of Advance Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT), most U.S. law enforcement agencies don’t require Active Violent Incident (AVI) training or the equivalent for their officers. Only two states, Texas and Michigan, require it by law.

Nashville’s response to the Covenant School Shooting on March 27, 2023, demonstrates the importance of active shooter training. In response to 911 calls, patrol officers arrived on the scene first, ahead of a specially trained school SWAT team. Rather than wait for the SWAT team, the officers immediately entered the building and stopped the killing within three minutes (compared to 77 minutes in Uvalde). Although three students and three adults died, many more lives were surely saved.

Chief John Drake credits the effective response to the intensive training he requires of his entire force, including himself. “I said to our community after Uvalde that if the same scenario were to occur in Nashville, our officers were going in. That’s what we have trained to do, that’s what we would do, and,

on March 27, 2023, that’s what we did. I continue to grieve with my community the six precious innocent lives we lost that day. At the same time, I am so incredibly proud of our officers, some of whom rushed in to engage the threat, while others located victims, scooped them up into their arms, and sprinted out of the building to awaiting ambulances....”

Does Your Law Enforcement Agency Require Active Shooter Training?

As city/county manager, you can exercise your oversight authority to ensure your first responders are prepared. Meet with your chief of police or sheriff to convey your expectation that the entire force—including new recruits, veteran patrol officers, and the chief—have AVI training, or the active shooter equivalent, as soon as is practicable.

Respectfully consider your chief’s assurances that current training is sufficient but take the time to verify. According to Curnutt, at a minimum, the training should include:

1. Tactical skills needed to immediately stop an active shooter.

2. Basics of incident command and building a command structure.

3. Tactical emergency casualty care to stabilize injured victims.

4. A protocol to manage self-deployed law enforcement agencies. The minimum length and frequency of AVI training is 16 hours for every officer every two years, but Curnutt recommends additional interim training to hone critical skills and build muscle memory.

ALERRT (alerrt.org) is an important resource in your effort to ensure your force is fully trained. It is a federally funded training and research organization based at Texas State University. Importantly, ALERRT trainers provide AVI training to law enforcement agencies across the country at no charge. However, training the entire force may require supplemental municipal funding to pay for overtime and related expenses.

In addition to AVI training, your law enforcement agency requires proper equipment. This includes officer-fitted bulletproof vests, portable riflerated shields, an appropriate rifle for every officer, radios that are inter-operational with the local fire and emergency medical response agency, and tactical medical kits. Although the need to avoid militarizing our nation’s police is a valid concern, this gear protects the lives of our officers.

Ask your chief what is needed to provide the required AVI training and equipment. Then work with your mayor and local elected officials to deliver it.

What Is Your Protocol for Treating the Critically Wounded?

The most frequent cause of preventable death from an

injury is serious bleeding. According to the CDC, an injured person with a compromised artery can bleed out within three to five minutes. In the past, EMTs were trained to wait until an emergency scene was secured by law enforcement before providing medical assistance. As a result, many victims died before EMTs could reach them.

Now, law enforcement officials can and should be trained to provide tactical emergency casualty care, such as applying tourniquets and covering chest wounds, to stabilize severely injured victims until they can be transported to a medical facility (sometimes by police car). This is an important component of AVI training. Similar stopthe-bleed training can also be provided to teachers and other community members.

Additionally, consider establishing a rescue task force (RTF) for your community. A joint RTF team composed of police and EMTs can be deployed to provide point-ofinjury care to victims in the “warm zone” (i.e., when there is an ongoing threat). EMTs treat, stabilize, and remove the injured while wearing protective gear under the protection of law enforcement. Understand your community’s fire/EMT protocol, and modify it if necessary, to ensure that police and fire officials/EMTs work and train together to provide these basic, but critical, medical services.

Where Is the Nearest Trauma Center?

A key tenet of trauma care is reducing time from point of injury to initial and definitive care to improve the survival rate of severely injured patients.

AP Photo/Wade Payne

Chief John Drake of the Metro Nashville Police Department speaks during a vigil held for victims of The Covenant School shooting.

Some experts believe the time limit for surviving serious injuries without trauma care may be as short as 30 minutes. In Uvalde, several physically injured victims survived the shooting but later died because they did not receive the medical care they required in time.

Your goal is to understand where victims in your community will go for trauma care and how they will be transported.3 Precision coordination with multiple medical facilities (possibly across state lines) may be required to save the lives of multiple victims. Consider discussing hospital destinations and capabilities with your local medical command and control system. Include local law enforcement leaders and other agencies that may be involved in victim transport in these discussions, as these first responders do not interact with medical command as readily as emergency medical systems (EMS).

If your community is located in a “trauma desert,” the lack of access to trauma care after a mass shooting can lead to higher mortality rates.4 In rural areas, on islands, or in other geographically hardto-reach areas, the nearest trauma center may be more

than 30 minutes away.5 Even urban areas with Level 1 and 2 trauma centers can be a “desert” if the hospitals lack the surge capacity to handle a large number of seriously injured victims. In trauma deserts, alternative systems must be in place to shorten the time to critically needed initial medical interventions.

As previously noted, training and equipping first responders and community members to provide hemorrhage control can help stabilize victims until they can be transported to a medical facility. Proper training also ensures that self-deployed law enforcement agencies don’t block roadways, which can hinder the transport of victims to medical centers.

In trauma center deserts, local hospitals may become the receiving facility for mass shooting victims by default, and therefore should prepare for mass casualty events. Their role will be to adequately stabilize and transfer these patients to higher levels of care.

Finally, consider initiating conversations and publicprivate partnerships with trauma centers and local hospitals to encourage the development of surge capacity. These relationships, though complicated because of the

In Uvalde, several physically injured victims survived the shooting but later died because they did not receive the medical care they required in time.

public-private sector divide, should be established before communities are faced with a mass casualty incident.

Is Your Community Ready to Provide Victim Services?

Ensuring your community is prepared to provide appropriate non-medical services to victims and their families in the aftermath of a mass shooting is a significant undertaking that requires advance planning. Your law enforcement agency will likely establish the first victim response center (often called the family and friends center or family notification center).6 This is where families can be reunited with their loved ones or receive death notifications. However, the victims and families usually require ongoing support. A family assistance center (FAC)

should be established to provide a range of services for the weeks following an incident. Ideally, the FAC is followed by a longerterm resiliency center (RC) or trauma recovery center (TRC) to provide long-term support. Planning these services requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Meet with the representatives of your local public health agencies, the FBI Victim Services Division, local victim advocates (found in the office of the district attorney and/or police departments), the American Red Cross, and community-based organizations to develop a plan to provide victim and family services.

The federal Office of Victims of Crime (ovc.ojp.gov) funds the National Mass Violence Center (nmvvrc.org), which can help your community prepare for a collaborative response to mass shootings. The NMVC’s 16 Best Practices help guide communities through the steps needed to prepare for a mass violence incident.7

Are Your First Responders Training with Neighboring Communities?

Improving coordination with neighboring communities and mutual aid partners is also an important priority. Discuss the need for AVI training with the city leaders of neighboring communities; their law enforcement agencies will likely respond to your mass shooting and vice versa. Coordinate a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional active shooter drill to test the ability of your first responders to establish a unified command structure, coordinate with mutual aid partners, and manage self-deployed officers. Depending on your

Covenant Presbyterian Church and Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. (Photo by Dclemens1971, Wikipedia Commons)

community’s emergency operations plan, you may be called to serve as the incident commander of the entire emergency scene following a mass shooting. In that case, your role is critical to managing every facet of the operation, including police, fire/EMS, communications, victim support, and more.

Understanding what the law enforcement response should look like will allow you and your mayor to monitor an actual critical incident. You will need to intervene if significant problems emerge, such as the failure of law enforcement to establish incident command, which happened in Uvalde.

Is Your Mayor Ready?

A separate training should be held with the mayor and other local leaders to ensure they understand their role during the response to a mass shooting. For an overview of the mayor’s role, see the article, “Until We Find a Way to Prevent Mass Shootings, Your City Needs to Prepare,” from PM Magazine.8 It is worth noting that Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s office prepared before the Covenant School shooting. As Kristin Wilson, Nashville’s COO, later explained, “As much as we might wish for it not to be so, it’s critically important for cities to prepare for the possibility of an

active shooter incident.” Wilson scheduled a briefing with city staff and my organization, UnitedOnGuns, to better understand the city’s role in response to a mass shooting. She directed her team to review our resources, the Mass Shooting Protocol & Playbook.9 She later organized a tabletop exercise. When Wilson received the dreadful call that a mass shooting was underway at the Covenant School, she went to the office, picked up the playbook, and went straight to the school. Wilson said that she, Mayor Cooper, and other staff members referred to the resources throughout the response.

What’s in Your Toolkit?

In 2020, UnitedOnGuns, a nonpartisan initiative of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University, interviewed mayors and staff from six cities who had responded to a mass shooting. Our focus was the role of city leaders during the response. We used the best practices of these city leaders combined with resources developed by the CDC, the FBI, and other federal agencies to develop resources that city managers can use to plan for, respond to, and recover from mass shootings.

To bolster local preparedness, we developed a Preparedness Checklist, which summarizes the key actions a city should take to ensure a unified response. The checklist recommends the following actions to ensure a unified response: (1) plan crisis communications; (2) ensure law enforcement agencies are prepared; (3) prepare to provide victim services; (4) support the needs of staff and first responders before an incident; and (5) schedule a tabletop exercise.

The Tabletop Exercise Template can be used alongside the Preparedness Checklist to plan the city’s unified response to a mass shooting. The template, developed in cooperation with the city of Orlando, provides helpful guidelines for organizing a tabletop exercise focusing on specific goals to work toward. An annual exercise will help city agencies, stakeholders, and multiple jurisdictions determine their roles and clarify how they will cooperate.

To aid in the response to a mass shooting, we developed the Mass Shooting Protocol10 and the Mass Shooting Playbook: A Resource for U.S. Mayors and City Managers.11 The protocol is a checklist that highlights the key responsibilities of a mayor or city manager during the first 24 hours after a mass shooting. The playbook is a comprehensive resource that city leaders can use to prepare for, respond to, and help their communities recover from a mass shooting. These and other key resources for city leaders are available free of charge on our website, unitedonguns.org.

The burden of responding to a mass shooting rests largely on the shoulders of city leaders.

However, the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention (O/GVP) recently announced an initiative to help coordinate support provided by federal agencies to cities responding to a mass shooting.12 Contact O/GVP or the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs for more information.

Learn more about mass shooting preparedness at the 2024 ICMA Annual Conference session, “It’s Not If but When: Critical Incident and Mass Shooting Preparedness for City Managers,” on September 22 at 11:45 a.m.

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ justice-department-releases-report-itscritical-incident-review-response-massshooting-robb

2 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ archive/2024/03/parkland-shooter-scotpeterson-coward-broward/677170/

3 https://www.amtrauma.org/page/ traumalevels

4 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC3698742/

5 https://www.amtrauma.org/page/ FindTraumaCenter

6 The term “Family Reunification Center” is still used by law enforcement, but victim advocates recommend against using it because it suggests victims will be reunited with their families. This may not happen, adding further trauma to their experience.

7 https://icptta.com/16-best-practices/

8 https://icma.org/articles/pm-magazine/ until-we-find-way-prevent-massshootings-your-city-needs-prepare

9 https://www.unitedonguns.org/

10 https://www.unitedonguns.org/s/ PublicHealth_Protocol_4web.pdf

11 https://www.unitedonguns.org/s/ Mass-Shooting-Playbook.pdf

12 https://www.politico.com/ news/2024/04/18/white-houselaunches-emergency-response-protocolfor-mass-shootings-00153182

SARAH C. PECK is director of UnitedOnGuns (unitedonguns.org), an initiative of the Public Health Advocacy Institute (phaionline.org) at Northeastern University School of Law.

SAFER STREETS

Declaring a traffic safety emergency

BY SCOTT CHADWICK

In 2022, the city of Carlsbad, like cities throughout the United States, had noted a marked increase in injury collisions over pre-pandemic conditions. Hundreds of new e-bike riders, many too young for a driver’s license, only heightened community concerns about traffic safety. Looking at the data, the concerns were well-founded. Carlsbad had experienced a 213% increase in collisions involving bikes and e-bikes since 2019.

Our city council called for more to be done to improve traffic safety, having already taken the lead by passing the first cityspecific e-bike regulations in 2021. We immediately ramped up enforcement and launched a public service campaign about e-bike safety. A long-term multimodal plan was making steady progress on street improvements.

We were doing all the right things when, in August 2022, two people lost their lives in separate e-bike collisions on Carlsbad streets. With back-to-school season just weeks away, bringing hundreds more bikes and e-bikes to school neighborhoods throughout the city, not to mention more drivers and pedestrians, we felt compelled to do more.

Like most municipalities, we train for emergencies, running drills on potential hazards, which in California includes wildfires, earthquakes, landslides and, yes, pandemics. One of the big advantages of governments taking a common approach to emergency management is that the whole thing is very plug and play. No matter the nature of the incident, all the resources of the city are at that time focused on

supporting the response, with everyone having a specific and distinct role.

Could addressing traffic safety as a local emergency be the solution? After consulting with our city attorney, we were confident in our findings that conditions of extreme peril threatened our community’s safety. So, on August 23, 2022, the city of Carlsbad declared a local traffic safety emergency, which the city council ratified the following week.

Fast forward 12 months, when the council ended the emergency, the comprehensive strategy we were able to create and implement had been a success. Injury collisions were down 13% year over year. As I write this today, those numbers are holding steady. So, what changed from our previous efforts to improve traffic safety and the work we were able to do in the context of an

emergency declaration? I’ve thought about that a lot.

Certain provisions of a formal emergency declaration can’t be replicated, like streamlined procurement and permitting. Others, like the four that follow, could be emphasized more in our day-to-day operations to make major initiatives more successful:

1. Focus

During an emergency, everyone is focused on a single set of objectives. The team is in total alignment. Unlike a fire, where you can see the progressions of the threat in real time, our traffic safety emergency was largely invisible. That didn’t stop our team from rallying around the problem as if it were a fast-moving fire. This shift in mindset and shift in management approach made a difference in the results we achieved.

2. Collaboration

Like most city/county managers, I have zero tolerance for siloes. And I acknowledge that they exist. Pulling people out of their normal day-to-day roles to work together as part of a multidisciplinary team, like you do in an emergency operations center (EOC), leaves no room for siloes. Seeing how our team came together to manage the traffic safety emergency further reinforces the importance of cooperation and collaboration across functions, emergency or no emergency. Every single city department ended up playing a role in addressing traffic safety during the emergency. We were aligned around a single objective.

3. Structure

Tapping into our assistant director of emergency services meant that our subject matter experts could focus on their tasks, not the overall management and coordination of resources.

Daily situational briefing reports, documented incident objectives, and clear tasks kept the team on track. Communication flowed more effectively and decisions were made very efficiently within the EOC structure.

4. Community Involvement

Also built into the emergency management structure is an emphasis on coordination and partnership with other agencies and organizations. We do this already, but I saw it expand four-fold during the emergency. We communicated the urgency of the situation and others came on board to help, participating in news conferences, distributing information within their networks, and hosting community events.

Although the emergency ended almost a year ago, the city council continues to prioritize traffic safety as we implement the Safer Streets Together Plan. We made a measurable improvement in public safety and strengthened

relationships within our organization and with our community. Our emergency proclamation accomplished its goal. But it also showed that some of the most effective parts of the emergency management structure might also have a home outside the EOC.

Learn More

You can find the details of our Safer Streets Together strategy at carlsbadca.gov/saferstreets or email us at communication@carlsbadca.gov

SCOTT CHADWICK is city manager of Carlsbad, California, USA (scott.chadwick@ carlsbadca.gov).

Navigating the Aftermath of Officerinvolved Shootings

Reflections on my experience and recommendations for policies and procedures to help along the way

BY JEFF WECKBACH

It’s 4:00 p.m. on a Wednesday. Unlike a typical Wednesday, I had decided to take the day off to spend time with my threeand six-year-old children while my spouse is away for work. My phone dings, indicating a text message. The team at the office knows that the best way to get ahold of me during my off time is with a call, so I assume it must be something trivial. With that, I go back to our game of catch.

Then, a phone call. I see that it’s the police lieutenant and quickly pick up. With barely a “hello” uttered, the lieutenant starts without missing a beat. “Our officers were involved in a shooting at the local grocery store. Two individuals were shot. Those are the details I have right now.”

After hanging up the phone, I paused to reflect on my next actions. There wasn’t time to reach out to peers for guidance or to search for articles on how to handle this situation. I knew I had to first take care of my family and get them off to relatives for the evening in order to be able to assist our team. Thankfully, those moments of prepping my children for a sleepover at their grandparents’ house and the drive into the office provided a critical resource—reflection time.

The actions I took next and am sharing with you are not intended to cover any or all of the possibilities and nuances involved in an officer-involved shooting. Rather, this is intended to be a simple guideline to help frame thoughts on how to best respond to the situation. Some of these strategies are items that you can do now, others will depend on the moment and the facts surrounding the case, and some actions will have to take place after the event.

1. Train your staff. We regularly and continually train on large mass disaster incidents, but until the moment comes, you will not likely know what short comings your team has. For example, what is your EMS strategy on responding to hot zones? Warm zones? How will this be communicated on ground? Who does the EMS incident commander need to find in order to have unified or joint command with the police? Most of these are items that can be ironed out by actively training together across departments.

2. Train your electeds. Do your elected officials know where to go in the event of an emergency? Will they show up on scene and start talking to the media? Do your electeds know what they are allowed to say to the media and when? How will you respond when an elected official leaks information to the media or goes on camera?

3. Train yourself.

If you haven’t spoken with your police or fire about these incidents to ask where they would like you staged, now would be a good time to do so. In our case, the advice of our team is to establish a secondary command post at the police station where communication can flow via radio and where media can be staged for interviews.

Speaking of which, if you are fortunate enough to have a public safety radio on your desk, it would be good to test your ability to navigate the channels and to see its range of operability. Our team quickly shifted to an area-wide communication channel, which was stated one time. If we

missed that communication or did not know how to navigate to the channel, then we would have missed vital information as the scene developed.

4. Have a policy.

While the details of each policy are going to be agency dependent, our policy specifically places any officer involved in a shooting directly on administrative leave with pay until an internal investigation can be completed.

It was helpful to havethis policy already in place when speaking with the local police union representatives. It allowed us to provide the media with a matter-of-fact statement that prevented the media stories from being focused on discipline. We were even able to share the policy with the media, showing its adoption date to further prove that it was not a result of discipline.

Our policy also states that the officers involved cannot provide their statement on the incident until a minimum of three days after the incident. Studies have shown that individuals involved in a traumatic event will initially repress memories that start to return over a 72-hour time period. In our case, one of the officers mentioned that they did not recall the first 10 seconds

of what happened until three days later.

Finally, will you let your officers watch the body cam footage prior to writing their statements? Our policy did not address this issue and it’s an area we are looking to address in a revised policy. Further, what policies do you have on who has access to the body cam footage and will it be locked down to just a few individuals within the police? In our case, only the chief of police had direct access to the footage, which was then turned over to an outside agency for investigation. This was an area of contention for our elected officials, as one of them demanded that they be shown the footage. Using our policies as our guideposts, we did not share those details to protect the investigation.

In the Moment

1.

Start the phone tree.

After situating my children in front of the TV with a show to watch, the first thing I did was to inform my elected board of the incident. With a threemember board that all wants the information immediately, I started by sending a text message to each of them

with the same information and then calling them one by one after. I am generally aware that our elected board has several media contacts, which meant that I had to be somewhat careful as to what information I provided. In my mind, certain elements of plausible deniability could be beneficial. After calling each elected, I committed to a timeframe by which I would provide them their next update. This helped to mitigate constant calls and texts to me for more information and allowed me the space to call our township attorney, assistant administrators, and communications team.

2. Hand off the investigation. This may not apply if you have a large department or nuances in your state law. However, removing bias is extremely important in an officer-involved shooting to ensure that the details and circumstances related to the incident are reviewed by folks that do not know the

officers involved. In our case, we called the State Bureau of Criminal Investigations, which had already handled over 100 officer-involved shootings in the first five months of that year.

3. Isolate involved employees.

Once the incident has stabilized, the officers that discharged their firearms should be isolated to protect the integrity of the internal investigation. If possible, they should be removed from the scene and secluded in a nonthreatening area. It’s okay for employees to be in that area as long as those involved are not together, which is going to be difficult as the officers involved will likely want to process the situation together. Bear in mind that where you isolate the officers will have an effect on their mental health.

In a prior incident years ago, an officer was isolated to the area where we hold prisoners on a temporary basis. This sent a negative message to the employee, and it’s something they are still processing decades later. With this current incident, we established different employee

offices as locations for where all three involved employees would be separately held.

4. Show up.

The easiest thing you can do is to just be present. You may not provide a lot of insight in the moment, but your presence will help to reassure staff that you are physically there for them. Also, make sure the officers call their families. Their families will be extremely worried, and that phone call can go a long way in reminding them of what is important. Finally, if you have time, pick up a pizza or two. The initial response to the event will likely take hours and the employees involved may not have had a chance to eat since the start of their shift.

5. Call the union.

While we all may not always get along, it is important to call the union, if applicable. They will appreciate that you are open with them and will likely be able to provide additional resources to help the employee. Further, this call will give you a chance to set expectations about next steps and return-to-work protocols.

6. Consider public records. Each state has unique public records laws. There will be a lot of requests for information, reports, and body camera footage. Also, the personnel files for the involved employees will be requested and anything bad in their history will come out. We immediately assigned staff to start pulling and redacting personnel files. We also made our communications team aware of any issues that might be negatively highlighted in the media. Finally, we also made sure that everyone that fills records requests across the organization was in the loop on redaction requirements, information that is or is not public record, and timelines for filling requests.

Following the Incident

1. Prepare mentally for the media circus.

I found that the media was calling me, along with everyone in senior leadership, for the better part of four days. They demanded information. They demanded updates. They used every strategy in the book, including suggesting that they were going to publish a story about how obstinate we were if we didn’t give them what they asked

for. To say our patience was tested by the media would be an understatement. Our communications team got together early to discuss strategy and we decided to reveal as much as possible in the moment. After that, we had to rely on the local prosecutor and outside investigation team to determine what could be released and when.

2. Conduct an after-action meeting. Getting all department leaders and a layer or two of your police command team together in the days following the incident will allow your team to work through any issues that arose during the incident and to plan for ways to address those issues should another incident arise.

In our case, we followed a simple agenda:

A. Discussion of on-scene tactics.

B. Discussion of communication.

C. Discussion of post-scene clean-up and release.

D. Other items.

This meeting lasted nearly two hours and we identified a number of ways in which we could improve our response. The two most impactful things we learned:

• We could have freed up more resources if we had our public services team assist with road closures and traffic control.

• Our fire department did not have a radio with police channels.

3. Thank everyone.

Keep a list along the way. There will be a lot of people that will help in the moment, and they should be recognized for their work. Whether it is the police clerk who stayed over and worked an extra eight hours, the onscene sergeant, or even EMS squads that responded to assist the wounded, everyone that played a role should be recognized and thanked for the help the provided.

Conclusion

When you’re faced with a situation like an officerinvolved shooting, your every action must be purposeful. Take the time now to plan out

strategies for your response. It’s critical to think about what you can do to ensure that you and your staff are prepared ahead of time, how you should respond in the moment, and how you should navigate the days and weeks that follow. If and when the time comes, being able to rely on established polices and procedures will make all the difference.

When you’re faced with a situation like an officer-involved shooting, your every action must be purposeful.

JEFF WECKBACH is township administrator of Colerain Township, Ohio, USA.

“THE BIG ONE” BRACING FOR

West Coast efforts to strengthen links between public works and emergency response offer lessons for local governments everywhere.

BY SARAH SIELOFF AND DANIELE SPIRANDELLI, PhD

Imagine an earthquake large enough to devastate the West Coast of the United States. The shaking alone—to say nothing of the tsunami that might follow—could collapse bridges and render roads impassable. It would shut down water, wastewater, electricity, and internet service. Utilities could take weeks or months to return in some areas. Economic and civic life could be disrupted for years.

Complicating matters, “Earthquakes operate on a time scale that’s both inevitable and inscrutable,” writes Seattle Times science journalist Sandy Doughton in her 2013 book, Full Rip 9.0.1 That a major earthquake will eventually strike is a given, but as Doughton observes, “It could be ten minutes from now, or it could hold off until today’s toddlers are great-grandparents.”

The uncertainty and risk around seismic events pose wicked challenges for local governments. The aging infrastructure that exists in most American cities will complicate response, longerterm recovery, and system resilience. The potential impacts are so complex that cities, counties, and special districts often struggle to develop a shared understanding to prioritize investments and guide pre-planning.

One through-line, however, is that in the aftermath of any earthquake, public works professionals will be critical first responders. Their skills, equipment, and knowledge of the systems that make daily life possible are essential for earthquake preparedness and response. But this can seem like a tall order amid the dual challenge of keeping aging infrastructure running while preparing for disaster response and recovery with limited time, funding, and training.

From a planning perspective, earthquakes’ uncertainty and catastrophically destructive potential are a one-two punch for local governments. The unknowns can lead to competing interests, delayed investments, and siloed activities. The unique nature of seismic threats, however, also offers lessons and insights. As the rest of the country braces for tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, West Coast jurisdictions that are planning for “the big one” offer learning opportunities for local governments around the country, including those for whom earthquakes don’t register as a major risk.

One Small City, Shaken and then Stirred to Action

On February 28, 2001, at 10:54 a.m. Pacific Time, Public Works Director Kirk Holmes had just wrapped up an all-staff meeting of his 65 employees in the city of Snoqualmie, Washington, then population 1,859.2 Snoqualmie’s public works department had just initiated operations out of a new building. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” says

Holmes. “I had just walked back into the building and the earthquake hit.”

The magnitude 6.8 quake rocked Snoqualmie—perched atop 25 to 30 feet of liquefiable soils—and caused over $2 billion in damage across the Puget Sound region. When the shaking ceased, Holmes tried to bring his staff back together, only to find that many had left to check on their families.

Twenty minutes later, a water operator noticed reservoir

levels dropping. There were water main breaks everywhere, and the city was on the verge of running out of water—a major risk, given that fires tend to follow earthquakes. Holmes headed for the field. His administrative assistant took charge of getting resources to families so that staff could return to work. It took 24 hours to get Holmes’ staff back and working 12-hour shifts.

The Nisqually earthquake (as it came to be known)

could have been much worse. Fortunately for the impacted jurisdictions, its depth—the epicenter was 33 miles deep—mitigated its destructive power.3

For Holmes, now director of Central Washington services and preparedness programs for infrastructure consulting firm Perteet, the event was career-defining.

“We demonstrated to our community at the time the value of a skilled public works practitioner,” says Holmes.

More accustomed to floods, Snoqualmie’s public works department hewed as closely as possible to the city’s emergency management plan, and treated the response as a learning opportunity by conducting thorough after-action reviews.

The earthquake ended up strengthening the connections between Snoqualmie’s public works and emergency response teams. “We understood that we needed more training, and we had a great scenario to train to,” Holmes recalls.

Snoqualmie also focused on identifying projects that could be eligible for federal funding as part of disaster mitigation efforts. “We were wildly successful…at obtaining federal money,” Holmes recalls. Postearthquake, Snoqualmie won funds to elevate six sanitary sewer lift stations— something that was unheard of in the Pacific Northwest at the time. The biggest takeaway, however, was that “emergency managers and public works professionals… need to be more connected. And ironically, it doesn’t take millions of dollars to do that.”

Damage from the Nisqually earthquake in Pioneer Square in Seattle’s historic district. FEMA News photo by Kevin Galvin.

Functional Recovery as a Paradigm for Earthquake Preparedness and Response

“My question is really ‘how long can a jurisdiction afford to be down?’ [Seismic resilience is] being able to bring back our communities in a way that reduces our downtime,” says Elenka Jarolimek, an emergency manager embedded with Seattle’s Department of Construction and Inspections. She assists with internal planning, training, and exercises with staff that are responsible for building safety evaluations both pre- and post-earthquake. This is particularly relevant for cities like Seattle, where over 1,000 unreinforced masonry buildings do not meet current seismic codes.

Functional recovery offers a framework for planning and prioritizing resilience investments, and improving connections between emergency management and public works. Outlined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a 2021 report, functional recovery emphasizes protecting lifeline infrastructure systems and reducing the time it takes to recover and reoccupy buildings so that communities have shelter, protection, and a basic ability to operate in the wake of disaster.4,5

Planning for functional recovery requires understanding complex interdependencies. For example, road damage interrupts fuel transportation, and the backup generators that keep water pumps running, and the availability of water to fight fires. And because refineries need water to produce fuel, fuel

The aging infrastructure that exists in most American cities will complicate response, longer-term recovery, and system resilience.

availability can further impact water supplies. “There’s this huge, nebulous body of work around interdependencies for critical infrastructures that’s going to take years to unpack and identify priorities,” says Chad Buechler, an emergency manager at Seattle Public Utilities. “We have great relationships among the infrastructure folks, but are we assessing and training and analyzing and responding together around those?”

Interdependencies also relate to staff. Ronnie Mompellier, an emergency manager for wastewater embedded in Portland, Oregon’s Bureau of Environmental Services, notes

that Portland is a city built on two rivers and served by multiple bridges, which first responders rely on to reach critical infrastructure. The conditions of roads and bridges post-earthquake could have serious implications for staffing. Says Mompellier, “We are lucky to have a very large campus… so we have a way to house staff, and we’ve invested in cots and emergency food.” During a January 2024 snow and ice event, those facilities allowed staffers to avoid commuting in dangerous conditions, making it easier for them to focus on response. Such an arrangement may not be optional following a major earthquake.

Despite the lack of clear answers, understanding what interdependencies could potentially exist is an important step forward. Artificial intelligence may eventually help unravel these relationships, but for now, there is no substitute for conversation.

Along with untangling interdependencies, functional recovery emphasizes avoiding siloed approaches to disaster preparedness. This is particularly important as climate impacts continue to

intensify, which may make seismic preparedness seem like a competing priority. From a functional recovery perspective, for example, Jarolimek advocates that “instead of thinking only about investing in climate resilience, we should be encompassing seismic resilience in that conversation.” A focus on functional recovery may very well push local governments to explore expanded, creative approaches and perspectives to emergency preparedness and response.

Staffing, Training, and Communicating

In larger jurisdictions like Portland and Seattle, public works, buildings departments and utilities have their own emergency managers. Elenka Jarolimek, Chad Buechler, and Ronnie Mompellier are examples. “The emergency managers work really well and really closely together, especially because our Bureau of Emergency Management is very small, so they’re not always able to meet our needs,” says Mompellier. These embedded cross-disciplinary arrangements build networks of emergency managers throughout public

A large van crushed by earthquake debris in a Seattle parking lot. FEMA News photo by Kevin Galvin.

works departments, who understand vulnerability from their engineering colleagues’ perspectives.

While they may not be able to staff similarly, smaller jurisdictions can also take deliberate steps to enhance connections between public works and emergency management. And with generally larger budgets, public works can play a leading role. Kirk Holmes uses the example of rural Chelan County in central Washington: “The person leading [public works] has been through a bunch of events, and has prioritized preparedness in his department in a variety of little, different ways. And they have a relationship—they know their emergency managers, they are engaged when there are planning processes going on, and they’re committed to making that happen.” Holmes stresses that the up-front costs of improving connections between public works and emergency management pale

in comparison to the costs of disaster recovery.

That’s especially true if those investments improve a local government’s ability to navigate federal disaster assistance. “Public assistance programs are the one thing that public works departments count on to stabilize their budget in response to disasters,” Holmes asserts. Federal requirements for cost recovery, however, change the rules of accounting after a disaster, which changes how local government does business. Holmes urges public works and emergency management professionals to make the investments to develop subject matter expertise on federal disaster funding now. “You cannot afford to wait for the disaster to understand this,” he says.

That focus on proactive learning is key, since as Chad Buechler observes, “We don’t get a nice little shake very often around here to remind us” about seismic risk.6 He advocates for

David Briggs, who is both director of operations and maintenance and the emergency operations director at East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) in Oakland, California, agrees. EBMUD is a special district that provides drinking water for 1.4 million people across 17 cities and wastewater treatment for 740,000.

public works departments and their emergency management colleagues to get creative in seeking out training opportunities: “If it’s not happening in your neighborhood right now and you’re an emergency manager or a public works professional, be supportive of sending your folks to go find it,” he says. Buechler has personally supported response efforts to Hurricane Sandy, tornadoes in Alabama, and a major landslide in a neighboring county. He counts that cross-training as critical “to learn what it’s like to operate in an overwhelmed incident management environment.” Alternatively, jurisdictions can make their own training opportunities, in part by making every event, no matter how small, into a learning opportunity. Asks Mompellier, “If you can’t really think about how you’re going to do something on a blue sky day, then how are you going to do it on a gray sky day?”

While faults like California’s San Andreas or the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California are famous, lesser-known faults like the Seattle Fault or the Hayward Fault in Hayward, California, are also capable of devastation. Notes Briggs, “In this business you typically design for a maximum credible earthquake. But that’s a theoretical number. We don’t design to a magnitude 9. We don’t, no one does.”

Instead, EBMUD plans for the more likely scenario of the maximum credible earthquake on the Hayward Fault. The Hayward Fault will slip right (anyone standing on the other side would move to the observer’s right), and “we have done a lot of work with our fault crossings so that…we can quickly isolate [broken] pipes and then connect a flexible pipe essentially to jump the fault,” reports Briggs. While EBMUD anticipates that the smallest pipes in its distribution system will sustain damage, by keeping backbone infrastructure protected, the district has prioritized a lifeline that can promote functional recovery and get people back into their homes. For example, “It may be the case that you don’t have water at your house for many, many days, if not a couple weeks, but you can walk 1,000

Fault map showing the general areas of the San Andreas, Cascadia, Portland, and Hayward faults.

Author: Michelle Toner, Haley & Aldrich. Earthquake faults and folds data source: United States Geological Survey

feet or 2,000 feet to a hydrant that we might have online,” says Briggs.

Both Briggs and Buechler emphasize the importance of communicating plans and likely risks to all stakeholders, both internal and external. “The science allows us to engage with people in a realistic manner,” says Buechler. “Our stuff is invisible, but that doesn’t mean we get to be invisible about the impacts these disasters could have on our services.”

For EBMUD, that means frequent level-setting of capabilities and needs, especially with city managers. In the event of a major earthquake, says Briggs, “We tell them, look, we can’t guarantee that all of your water is (a) going to be pressurized and (b) going to be potable.” He makes it a point to speak regularly with city managers and their public works and emergency management personnel to identify alignment between a city’s emergency plans and EBMUD’s capabilities. Detailed coordination with the cities they serve helps Briggs and his team assess existing soil and infrastructure conditions, identify potential synergies and barriers, and adjust plans accordingly.

Getting real about partner agencies’ capabilities is also a focus for the Regional Water Providers Consortium, which represents most of the water providers in the Portland, Oregon metro region. The Consortium has conducted studies to help its members understand what support they could expect in the wake of a catastrophe. As managing director Rebecca Geisen describes, “We really honed in on what the roles and responsibilities are of public

From a planning perspective, earthquakes’ uncertainty and catastrophically destructive potential are a one-two punch for local governments.

water providers, emergency managers…and federal agencies. We really wanted to drill down and make sure that everyone understands each other’s responsibilities.”

The Consortium has also developed a regional interconnectioned geodatabase to examine how members’ water systems are physically connected to each other, and how water might move around the region following a disaster. It has also invested in mobile water treatment and distribution equipment, on which members train regularly. “Every few years we do a big equipment rodeo,” says Geisen. “Everyone brings that equipment out and trains new staff on how to use it… and we always invite our county and state emergency managers so that they can be familiar with that equipment.”

Learning from Seismic Preparedness, Extending Lessons to Other Disasters

While videos of seismic destruction are readily available online, a major earthquake is nevertheless one of the most difficult disasters to imagine. More than any specific technical action, the most important thing local

leaders can do to support disaster preparedness of any kind is to establish a culture of preparedness.

Rebecca Geisen stresses that city managers can emphasize preparedness as “a core value and an expectation, not just a nice-to-have.” Critically, that posture creates a permission structure for investing in earthquake preparedness, since the uncertainty surrounding earthquakes can create challenges for generating political support for seismic resilience. And, says Geisen, “If you are prepared, make sure the people who come behind you know what work you did and empower them to continue it.”

Perhaps one of the most important lessons in preparedness is that local government staff are people first. Reflecting on his experience responding to the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, David Briggs recalls, “After I got back I realized that there were people that were absolutely, positively in the middle of post-traumatic stress.”

He continues, “In a regional disaster…there will be many people on a city manager’s staff who might look okay, might be there at the meeting with you, but they’re not okay, and you need to understand that and manage to it.” Planning to meet basic psychological needs may be as critical for keeping an emergency response functioning as locating fuel supplies and stopping water main breaks.

Enhancing connections between public works and emergency management is a constant undertaking. Doing it in preparation for a potentially catastrophic earthquake that may or may not happen in our lifetimes adds complexity. But

deliberate, steady investments in emergency preparedness can help move the needle. Planning and response function better when emergency managers understand the resources a public works department can bring to bear, and when public works professionals help shape, analyze, and rehearse emergency response plans. A resilient tide eventually lifts all boats.

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 Doughton, Sandi. (2013.) Full Rip 9.0. Sasquatch Books: Seattle.

2 In 2023, Snoqualmie was home to 13,465 residents, per the Census.

3 In comparison, California’s 1994 Northridge quake was smaller at magnitude 6.7, but more destructive in part because it originated just 11 miles deep. Northridge ultimately caused $20 billion in property damage and $40 billion in economic losses—the most expensive earthquake disaster in U.S. history. https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/24/ news/economy/earthquakes-10-mostexpensive/index.html

4 https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/ documents/fema_p-2090_nist_sp-1254_ functional-recovery_01-01-2021.pdf

5 A 2014 bill, HB2273, in Washington state was introduced to study statewide building code and construction standards related to earthquake and tsunami resilience and develop recommendations for functional recovery of buildings and infrastructure post-earthquake. The bill died in committee.

6 Buechler knows first-hand what a major earthquake can do: Following the 2001 Nisqually quake, “I looked at our backyard and asked ‘Mom, where’s our shed?’” The structure—along with a significant piece of the family’s backyard—had sloughed off into the Cedar River below.

7 The Regional Water Providers’ Consortium completed a regional emergency drinking water project and has developed social vulnerability assessment tools (https://rdpo.net/ emergencydrinkingwaterproject)

SARAH SIELOFF is an urban planner and funding strategist at Haley and Aldrich.

DANIELE SPIRANDELLI, PHD, is a resilience specialist and environmental planner at Haley and Aldrich.

Do Solutions to Crime Need to Be Complicated?

Cities can reduce crime by focusing on problems and dismantling crime opportunities.

BY SHANNON J. LINNING, TOM CARROLL, ICMA-CM, DANIEL W. GERARD, AND JOHN E. ECK

This is the first in a series of six articles about crime reduction.

The Importance of Crime Opportunities

German motor vehicle safety legislation once taught us a big lesson about crime. Between 1976 and 1985, Germany’s federal government rolled out laws requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets. Their intent was to reduce harm to motorists if they were involved in a crash.

But something unexpected happened once they passed the laws; thefts of motorcycles plummeted. The laws also had no impact on other motor vehicle theft.1 Why?

Before the government passed the laws, thieves could ride away on stolen motorcycles without looking suspicious. But once the helmet legislation took effect, non-helmet riders stood out and faced an increase in their risk of getting stopped by the police. Drivers of other vehicles, like cars and trucks, did not stand out because they are not expected to wear helmets.

Many thieves stole motorcycles for joyriding. Thieves seldom went about their lives carrying around helmets on the off chance they would feel the urge to steal a motorcycle. So their

options became (a) steal a motorcycle without a helmet and risk getting pulled over by the police, or (b) stop stealing motorcycles. Many would-be thieves chose the second option.

This motorcycle theft example illustrates three facts about crime. First, people are more likely to commit crime when it is easy. Researchers consistently find that when easy crime opportunities exist, people commit more crimes. Second, you are more likely to reduce crime when you influence how a crime is committed (the opportunity) as opposed to why the crime is committed (the motivation).

Third, small and simple changes can have a big impact on crime. Researchers have found that when people problem-solve on a small scale and dismantle crime opportunities, they have the biggest impact on crime.

But if solving crime can be so simple, why don’t we do it more often? One reason is that most people think about crime incorrectly. They think crime is complicated and that reducing crime requires changing major societal conditions. As city managers, you’ve probably heard the public’s demands following a significant crime: You need to address the mental

health crisis! You need to end poverty! You need to increase drug enforcement! You need to legalize drugs! You need to hire more police officers! You need to defund the police! You need to get rid of guns! We need more guns! And nothing changes. Then another significant crime occurs.

If you’re fed up with repeated crime crisis management, we have some evidence-based alternatives for you. This article is the first in a series dispelling common myths about crime. The first myth is that solutions to crime are complicated. The purpose of this article is to help you see through this myth so you can reduce crime by solving problems. Subsequent articles will deal with four other myths that often prevent local government officials from reducing crime. Our last

article links the five myths and introduces a tool that identifies failure-prone crime strategies.

How Should You Think About Crime? Focus on the Problem

People tend to make two mistakes when thinking about crime. Their solutions are either too big or too small. Cries for action from politicians, the media, and the public are often too big. They usually center on solving major societal issues, such as homelessness, poverty, the opioid epidemic, the mental health crisis, and the like. To address these, you need widescale cooperation from bureaucracies and immense resources to tackle them.

The other mistake is the reverse; people tend to think too small. We often observe this in police departments whose strategy is either responding

to 911 calls or putting “cops on dots” of a crime map. These are calls to address immediate troublesome events: a man yelling in the street, a woman overdosing in a park, a shoplifter stealing clothing from a store, or a thief breaking into a car in a parking garage. Simply responding to these requests makes officers feel like hamsters in a wheel running endlessly from call to call. Hiring more officers to chase these calls doesn’t prevent future events either. Police must keep going back.

While major societal issues and immediate troublesome events are problematic, they are not problems. To reduce crime in your community, you need to find the goldilocks zone between these two categories: problems.

Problems are a collection of unwanted or harmful

events that need solving. Problems are patterned, not random, so they must recur and do so in a predictable manner. If there is no pattern, there is nothing to be solved or prevented. The patterns themselves reveal the true causes of problems. Problems are troublesome circumstances bigger than individual events, but smaller than bad socioeconomic conditions.

Figure 1 shows three ways you can think about crime. They are depicted in an inverted triangle to represent the scale of each issue. If you focus on problems, you’ll see faster progress and generate long-term results. These successes will also give you momentum to continue your problem-solving efforts. Finding the goldilocks zone requires a little thinking. To illustrate, consider a

Figure 1.

concern that cities/counties consistently deal with: shoplifting. Motivations for shoplifting vary and epitomize several major societal issues. Some people steal because they have little money (poverty). Others steal because they need cash for drugs (the opioid epidemic). Others may shoplift simply for the notoriety (social media). While we are in favor of eradicating poverty, the opioid epidemic, and bad social media, as international development practitioner Jerry Sternin says, these solutions may be “TBU: True But Useless!”2 No police officer, mayor, city/county manager, or citizen will be able to accomplish them alone, and especially not quickly.

Shoplifting materializes as an immediate troublesome event every time retailers call the police. If a store experiences a single shoplifting event, no action is needed. But if a single store experiences many shoplifting events, you have a pattern. A common strategy is for police to simply respond to the immediate troublesome events every time they receive

You are more likely to reduce crime when you influence how a crime is committed (the opportunity) as opposed to why the crime is committed (the motivation).

a call. But if you’ve identified a pattern, it also means you have identified a solvable problem. If you solve the problem, the officers will not have to keep going back.

Crime analyst Michael Zidar and his team identified a problem when analyzing shoplifting patterns in Paducah, Kentucky, a Midwestern U.S. city of approximately 25,000 residents. Looking at police reports, Zidar discovered that the city’s two Walmart stores represented 15.1% of all police reported crimes and 67.4% of

all shoplifting reports in the city. So, in theory, if they could eliminate shoplifting at only two stores in the city, they could reduce shoplifting in the entire city by two-thirds.3

There are many ways to reduce shoplifting in a store. Stores who choose to install self-checkouts are at a higher risk of shoplifting, for example. A store can choose not to install them or remove them if present. Similarly, retailers can install locked display cabinets for high-value goods. They can also install a register next to the goods requiring customers to pay for high-value goods immediately instead of waiting until they get to the front of the store to buy them.

In Zidar’s Walmart case study, the two stores were unwilling to implement any of the evidence-based suggestions the police provided to reduce shoplifting. So, the police department implemented an online crime reporting system for any non-violent/compliant misdemeanor shoplifting cases at the two stores. The police department would no longer send officers to the stores when

a customer tried to shoplift goods worth less than $500. This shifted the financial burden of crime prevention from taxpayers to the stores themselves. This strategy led to a 45.2% reduction in shoplifting that the city had to deal with: an annual savings of about $27,000 in police time.

Say CHEERS to Your Problems!

We have advocated for focusing on problems, but how do you know when you have a problem? One way to identify crime problems is to use a modification of the CHEERS criteria, created by crime scientists Ronald Clarke and John Eck.4 CHEERS is an acronym that represents the six components of crime problems (Figure 2).

First, the concern being described must occur in the community. It cannot be a concern solely for local government administrators, such as police officers not wearing their hats. Second, there must be something harmful happening: death, injury, taking or destroying something that belongs to someone else, or even fear of using public space. It cannot be just a state of being, such as homelessness or something that makes people uncomfortable, such as teenagers standing on a street corner as you pass by. Third, there must be some expectation among some members of the public that local government must be involved. Fourth, all problems involve events, such as break-ins, threats, or transactions. It cannot be general states such as poverty or racism, or other general conditions like stupidity or declining morals. Fifth, the events need to repeat or have a high likelihood of repeating. If something is unlikely to recur (like a meteor strike), then

Figure 2. Use the CHEERS Criteria to Identify Crime Problems

Community The difficulty must affect the public It cannot just be a concern to the police

Harm There must be a tangible harm

Expectation Some in the public must see this as something for the local government to handle

Event Discrete incidents make up the problem

Repeat Events must recur, or are likely to

Similarity Events must share important characteristics

Modified from Clarke & Eck (2005)

While major societal issues and immediate troublesome events are problematic, they are not problems. To reduce crime in your community, you need to find the goldilocks zone between these two categories: problems.

Cannot just be a dislike

Cannot be something completely outside local government mandate

Break-ins to cars parked along a street block

Death; injury; theft; psychological trauma

Traffic crashes; burglaries; and fights

Cannot be a general state A prostitution transaction; a terrorist bombing

Cannot be a singular event with little chance of recurring

Cannot be an arbitrary collection of unlinked events

A building with frequent burglaries; reports of aggressive panhandling at an ATM

Crimes occurring at the same address; shootings between two rival gangs; wallet thefts from elderly men

there are no future events to prevent. Finally, these events that repeat must have something in common, a basis of similarity that indicates a common set of causes. They cannot be an arbitrary set of unconnected, albeit unfortunate, events.

Anything that does not meet all six CHEERS criteria is not a crime problem, in the technical sense. But if all six criteria are met, you can consider it a crime problem and begin your problemsolving process to understand why crime is occurring (covered in our next article).

Conclusion

We titled our article with the question, do solutions to crime need to be complicated? Our answer is no.

If you focus your efforts on major societal issues,

Police cars scraping each other in the police station parking lot

Discomfort with teenagers on sidewalk

A pandemic

Homelessness (is a state, not an event)

A train derailment with injuries; a bridge collapse

A car crash, burglary, report of a loud teen party, and theft all in the same week on the same block

you probably won’t get very far, and you’ll likely waste a lot of time and money. If you focus your efforts on immediate troublesome events, you probably won’t get very far either. Your police department will spend their time responding to 911 calls that simply address symptoms of underlying problems. They’ll keep having to go back to the same places about the same concerns.

Instead, ask yourself, what is the problem? Solving problems in your city/county will reduce crime. And as we will demonstrate in our next article, these problems will repeatedly occur at a tiny fraction of your city’s properties. If you can dismantle the crime opportunities at those few places, you will reduce your crime rate.

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 Mayhew, P., Clarke, R.V., & Elliott, D. (1989). Motorcycle theft, helmet legislation, and displacement. The Howard Journal, 28(1), 1-8.

2 Sternin, J. (2002). Positive deviance: A new paradigm for addressing today’s problems today. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 5, 57-62. https://www.jstor. org/stable/jcorpciti.5.57

3 Zidar, M. S., Shafer, J. G., & Eck, J. E. (2017). Reframing an obvious police problem: Discovery, analysis, and response to a manufactured problem in a small city. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 12(3), 316-331. https://doi. org/10.1093/police/pax085

4 Clarke, R.V. & Eck, J.E. (2005). Crime analysis for problem solvers in 60 small steps. US Department of Justice. Retrieved from: https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/ resourcecenter/RIC/Publications/copsw0047-pub.pdf

SHANNON J. LINNING, PHD, is an assistant professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She researches place-based crime prevention and problemoriented policing.

TOM CARROLL, ICMA-CM, is city manager of Lexington, Virginia, USA, and a former ICMA research fellow.

DANIEL GERARD is a retired 32-year veteran (police captain) of the Cincinnati Police Department, USA. He currently works as a consultant for police agencies across North America.

JOHN E. ECK, PHD, is an emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati, USA. For more than 45 years, he has studied police effectiveness and how to prevent crime at high-crime places.

Integration— The Key to Effective Emergency and Disaster Management

Cars submerged in Houston, Texas, USA, during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

When a disaster strikes, there’s no time for silos. Cross-discipline integration and partnerships at the local level are the answer.

BY JAY C. JUERGENSEN

It seems like we’re all on edge waiting for the next disaster, whether it be a potential pandemic, an unexpected storm, or an active shooter. As a result, today’s local government leader will be required to rethink and reimagine how to prepare for, respond to, and recover from the growing threat of disasters.

All disaster types traumatize us individually and collectively. While challenging our resolve, they also seem to touch every part of our lives and bring us together in ways nothing else does. Yet, the public management professionals and agencies critical to response and recovery are often scattered across siloed bureaucracies. Regardless of the size of your community, a disaster is coming your way, and in its wake, creating a thriving, peoplecentered, resilient community will require a new perspective.1

Anxiety provoked by uncertainty can be overcome by a greater sense of control and predictability through preparation and planning. And

the best way to gain that control and strengthen your emergency management efforts is by integrating your various public safety functions.

Disaster response often requires coordination with separate emergency management agencies, while also relying on human services and public works organizations and sometimes federal agencies as well. Rebuilding resources, and doing so in a resilient way, may come from a variety of state and federal agencies, each with their own mission and regulatory framework.

Even though numerous professional resources exist for the specific roles within public safety, emergency management, community development, floodplain management, etc., we must create opportunities for these professionals to come together and learn best practices across discipline and across platform.

Emergency management has been part of the American

pantheon since World War II, when the focus was preparing for enemy attack. The creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1979 consolidated five agencies in disparate parts of the federal government, institutionalizing modern thinking about emergencies and disaster management.2

While perspectives on the construct of disaster management have and will continue to evolve, there is a common understanding of three critical hallmarks, which only strengthen the case for cross-discipline public safety integration.

Similarity: All disasters have common features, suggesting that many of the same management strategies can apply to each.

Partnership: Success requires partnership among all sectors, allowing disaster victims to contribute to emergency management solutions.

Life Cycle: Disasters exist throughout time and have a life cycle of occurrence.3

Hallmarks of Disaster Management

Similarity Partnership Life Cycle

All disasters have common features, suggesting that many of the same management strategies can apply to each.

Success requires partnership amongst all sectors that allows the disaster victims to contribute to emergency management solutions.

Disasters exist throughout time and have a life cycle of occurrence.

Figure 1.

First Responders — Learning from the Consolidated Public Safety Model

There’s a reason they’re called first responders. Across the nation, nearly 18,000 police, 27,000 fire, and 21,000 EMS agencies use 700 to 800 MHz UHF and VHF radios to communicate with one another. A recent example of the importance of those connections and the response they trigger is the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

At 1:27 a.m., the Dali container ship issued its mayday call while drifting in the Patapsco River, and within one minute, traffic was prevented from crossing the bridge. Sixty seconds later, at 1:29 a.m., the bridge was gone. Multiple agencies immediately began a rescue operation and within minutes the Baltimore Fire Department Marine Unit had divers in the water. By 2:15, the injured construction workers were receiving medical attention. While six workers perished in the wreckage, without that immediate response, the loss of life would have been much more disastrous.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were just under 6 million motor vehicle crashes in 2022.4 Those crashes are responsible for approximately 14.5% of peopleinitiated contact with police and a little less than half of those crashes result in injuries. A U.S. fire department responds to a call every 24 seconds, and according to the U.S. Fire Administration, fires account for only 6% of their responses.5

“A public safety professional’s training and ability to respond ‘belts off, boots on’ is the most effective way for them to answer the call regardless of the emergency they face when they arrive on scene.” —Samantha Kretzschmar, director of public safety, Fraser, Michigan, USA

The vast majority of calls are for medical issues.

If police are typically first on scene for nearly every emergency and medical issues are the predominant reason for firefighter responses, it’s surprising that more communities have not consolidated their public safety functions.

Michigan State University’s Program on Police Consolidation and Shared Services identified 131 consolidated public safety agencies across the nation, 47% of which are in Michigan.6 That’s not surprising, given that the city of Oak Park, a diverse, inner-ring suburb of Detroit with approximately 30,000 residents, led the nation in consolidating its three public emergency agencies in 1954.

Fraser, Michigan’s director of public safety, Samantha Kretzschmar, a 30-year police department veteran, can’t imagine it any other way. “I’ve always had all the gear I need in my cruiser. A public safety professional’s training and ability to respond ‘belts off, boots on’ is the most effective way for them to answer the call regardless of the emergency they face when they arrive on scene.”

Public managers must think beyond their own community boundaries and budgets and consider the long view, examining opportunities to consolidate across discipline and seeking cooperation in a larger geographic area, while also sharing public safety obligations.

ICMA’s Center for Public Safety Management (cpsm.

us) can be a good place to start. The cross training that empowers public safety professionals to best respond to emergencies can provide a model for coordination of a wider variety of professionals that are part of the larger disaster and emergency management construct.

Navigating Federal Assistance

Climate change is life changing. Natural disasters touch every part of people’s lives—and these days they are touching more people’s lives more often. The United States has experienced 348 weather and climate disasters since 1980, and the total cost of these events exceeded $2.510 trillion. Over the last decade, 88.5% of U.S. counties declared

A U.S. fire department responds to a call every 24 seconds, but fires account for only 6% of their responses.

a natural disaster and that number is expected to grow exponentially as climate change continues to cause disasters to occur with greater frequency and impact.7 FEMA administers assistance after presidential declaration for specific counties impacted by disaster. State, tribal, county, eligible local, and nonprofit agencies in declared counties can receive aid under FEMA’s Public Assistance (PA) program to reimburse agencies for emergency work defined as debris removal and emergency protective measures.8

FEMA’s Individual Assistance (IA) programs allow individuals in declared counties to receive aid for homes, vehicles, personal property, businesses, or inventory that were damaged in the disaster.9 Assistance can include grants to help pay for temporary housing, emergency home repairs, uninsured and underinsured personal property losses, and other serious disaster-related expenses. But, in Detroit in 2021, after the region’s water infrastructure failed, only 46% of those that sought assistance from FEMA’s IA program were successful in being reimbursed for their loss.10

FEMA PA is the largest grant program providing funds to assist communities responding to and recovering

from disasters. In the simplest terms, FEMA’s PA program is essentially the insurance company for state and local government to protect and rebuild public sector assets. Referred to as “permanent work,” it is categorized to include roads and bridges, water infrastructure, and public buildings and contents. Similar to private insurance, FEMA PA assistance reimburses for the majority of the loss, typically at 75% of the cost. Each state determines how the non-federal share of 25% is split because the local share is analogous to private insurance deductibles.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBGDR) Program typically receives funds every year to provide assistance to support a broad range of recovery activities.11 Congress appropriated $7.4 billion in CDBG-DR funds to support recovery following Hurricanes Henri, Harvey, and Irma for 2017, and in 2023, the amount was $142 million for natural disasters across the country. Smaller communities may have even more challenges navigating HUD’s regulations, especially since jurisdictions under 50,000 in population are not eligible for HUD’s

annual entitlement fund, even though on a relative scale, the damages are just as devastating.

In an effort to reduce financial exposure in declared communities, governors often make broad commitments to use CDBG-DR funds, when they are available, as the local share or “match” for the PA program. And while the HUD funds can help, these two federal resources come from two very different agencies with very different missions, and very often, conflicting regulations. Attempts to link these two incohesive sources can be problematic and may, in fact, undermine efforts to maximize federal disaster aid.

Finally, a community’s ability to access large and competitive disaster aid resources like FEMA’s $3.46 billion Hazard Mitigation Grant Program12 and $1 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities13 programs, as well as HUD’s CDBG mitigation resources, will depend in large part on a municipality’s posture, as well as advanced and sound project planning.14

After 25 years in community and economic development, complex federal and military projects, and large public works programs, I was recruited by then-Governor

Andrew Cuomo to stand up the new Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery. I saw firsthand the devastation the storm had inflicted on communities in New York as we worked to rebuild the state’s infrastructure after Superstorm Sandy. Managing billions of dollars of federal disaster aid across several agencies gave me a new perspective. As both a disaster professional and disaster survivor, I believe communities should consider the following recommendations.

Making Your Community and Your Local Government More Resilient

Develop Organizational Capacity

It’s hard for public agencies to breathe. Different aspects in the disaster cycle will put pressure on the department that, at the moment, is in the lead. The situation can be exacerbated by the large amount of financial resources that might come to help it recover. Shrinking the staff after growing it to meet the demands of the community as they struggle to survive, restore order, conduct repairs, and plan for resiliency places additional burden on public management professionals already spread thin.

Often, consultants and contractors can be an easy way to grow an organization in the short term. Getting them onboard quickly to meet an agency’s immediate needs may be difficult in the context of public procurements. At the same time, when they leave, they can take with them the institutional knowledge and expertise critical to prepare your organization for the next time—because there will be a next time.

Alternatively, public managers might mirror the public safety and electric utility mutual aid model15 or consider establishing supportive sister city relationships across the country versus around the globe. Training to empower your staff with various kinds of technical expertise in disaster management would allow local government professionals from another geography to be “called up” to support their colleagues.

Plan and Integrate

Strengthen your emergency management plan by thinking about all the ways your community can be hit by a disaster: biological, chemical, explosion, cyber, violence, building collapse, and those nasty natural ones. Invest in cross training. Include every corner of every agency within and outside local government—human service agencies, healthcare, businesses, places of worship, and residents—because in a disaster, the CAO cannot be the only one that knows what everybody does and how to run a string through the pearls. When a disaster strikes, there’s no time for silos. It’s “all hands on deck” and redundancy makes you resilient. Establish a communication plan and make sure you communicate that plan to everyone involved ahead of time.

Then, think about all the things you might need when disaster strikes and procure

those goods and services in advance with standby contracts: dumpsters, tarps, traffic equipment, heavy construction equipment, temporary facilities, consultants, temporary staffing, human service agencies to assist folks with filing their FEMA claims, accommodations for your sister city colleagues, gloves, masks, etc. Think about sharing procurements across municipal boundaries. Use HUD’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) regulations in preparing the procurements, so two years later, those expenditures will qualify for using CDBG – Disaster Recovery (DR) as FEMA PA Local Share.

Resilience Budgeting

Communities are dealing with an ever-changing set of economic challenges. Along with tough economic choices about schools, transportation, paid leave, mental health services, salaries, sustainability, etc., communities must include resiliency in their budgeting.

Precious public resources, especially those critical for a community’s resilience and recovery, cannot be squandered. It is incumbent upon local governments to do everything in their power to maximize federal funds, while effectively leveraging their own resources and developing creative solutions to these difficult economic challenges.

When considering projects, managers should seek an opportunity for a “two-for.”

A community development project might acquire riverfront land for a park while also expanding or shifting a

floodplain. Consider a special tax to feed a literal rainy-day fund, and ensure it is protected so it does not get siphoned off for other purposes. Engage with philanthropy to support planning and assist in recovery before financial aid arrives after a disaster.

Lastly, comprehensive economic resilience must also be part of the equation. Look at financing used to support investments for economic development and link them to resilience. Instead of a grant for that expanded factory or distribution center on the edge of town, give that company a 30-year, 1% loan and use the interest income to invest in other items the community needs, like on Main Street, or for a levee, acquisition of land for an expanded floodplain, or resilient home improvements.

Transformational Leadership

Relying on federal disaster resources is challenging. Helping survivors succeed with their claims is important to their and the community’s recovery. At the same time, there is a bevy of grants for community development, climate resiliency, community policing, and the like, and these one-time financial infusions should be sought by local leaders and used strategically, while also leveraged for long-term resilience.

Congressional representatives need to learn more about how the policy rubber meets the practical road and ensure that the special appropriations from Congress are available for the largest possible sector of communities. Elected officials should not only weigh in, but

ensure their constituents are not left out.

A Final Word Batteries. When we are talking about complex regulatory matters and restructuring fragmented government organizations, it’s hard to imagine that something as simple as batteries would be how we end this discussion. (Do you have some at home? Are there fresh ones in your flashlight or transistor radio?)

Thinking about the critical role of something as simple as batteries can help you reflect on the larger implications of emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation.

Regardless of the disaster type, local government leaders must change their posture and cadence in response. This will require not just cooperation, but integration, where everyone understands the potential impact of natural and man-caused threats to their community. It will require them to

leverage resources within the community and look beyond the limits of their individual agency and geography, as well as effectively maximizing federal disaster aid when it becomes available.

Looking into the coming decades as we expect climatecaused disasters and trends in violence to continue to escalate, it is incumbent upon public managers to assess both the human and financial resources within our communities. We will have to act with intention to build capacity as the variety of threats to our communities continue to grow. We must reimagine our organizational construct, consolidate where we can, and integrate as much as possible. If resiliency is tantamount to surviving through and thriving after a disaster, managers must examine expenditures through that lens and seek supplemental resources whenever and wherever possible. When disaster strikes, it touches all of us and every part of our lives. Therefore, everyone must be

engaged in the effort, from citizen to senator.

Public managers can lead that charge, and together we will be more prepared, less anxious, and more effective in our response and more successful in our recovery.

Special thanks to Samantha Kretzschmar, director of public safety in Fraser, Michigan, for her contributions to this article.

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 https://j-assoc.com/consultancy

2 https://www.fema.gov/about

3 https://training.fema.gov/emiweb/ downloads/is10_a-3.pdf

4 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/ Public/ViewPublication/813560#:~:text= The%20estimated%20number%20of%20 police,to%203%2C196%20billion%20 in%202022

5 https://www.nfpa.org/educationand-research/research/nfpa-research/ fire-statistical-reports/fire-loss-in-theunited-states

6 https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/ resourcecenter/content.ashx/copsw0821-pub.pdf

7 https://www.forbes.com/advisor/ homeowners-insurance/counties-most-atrisk-for-natural-disasters/

8 https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/ files/2020-07/fema_public-assistancefact-sheet_10-2019.pdf

9 https://www.fema.gov/assistance/ individual

10 https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi. localhost/files/2023-03/CDBGDR%20Action%20Plan%20Draft%20 UPDATED%20March%202023.pdf

11 https://www.hudexchange.info/ programs/cdbg-dr/

12 https://www.fema.gov/grants/ mitigation/hazard-mitigation

13 https://www.fema.gov/grants/ mitigation/building-resilientinfrastructure-communities

14 https://www.hudexchange.info/ programs/cdbg-mit/

15 https://www.publicpower.org/mutualaid-and-emergency-response

JAY C. JUERGENSEN

is a nationally recognized expert in community and economic development, disasters and recovery and capital programs/public works management, having implemented $30 billion of investment in more than 31 communities and 20 states. His national practice is based in Brooklyn and Detroit. You can learn more about his work at j-assoc.com

2018 Ohio River flood in Cincinnati and Covington, Ohio, USA

Getting to Know the ICMA Senior Advisors Program

Celebrating 50 years of helping members

BY PAM BRANGACCIO, ICMA-CM

When I was selected in 2022 as the volunteer coordinator for the ICMA Senior Advisor program, my first task was to figure out how to follow an ICMA legend like Greg Bielawski, who served in the role for 17 years. Upon his retirement from the coordinator role, Greg was honored at the 2022 ICMA Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio, as a fitting tribute to his contributions to the program, ICMA members, and local government.

The Senior Advisor program is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, with 112 senior advisors in 30 states, yet we often find that many folks aren’t aware of this tremendous service we offer to ICMA members. You will see a series of PM articles from senior advisors in the coming months on activities within their states, as our number-one goal is to create more visibility for the program.

In reviewing the history of the program, I came across an article from 1973, when the idea for “a program of volunteers in public service” was first floated by Wes McClure, city manager of San Leandro, California, and an ICMA Executive Board vice president. The article stated, “A key element of the program is to provide managers who are about to retire with an opportunity for continued public service to the profession.” Wes McClure was the first senior advisor after the program, with its original name, Range Riders, was established in 1974.

PAM BRANGACCIO, ICMA-CM, is the volunteer coordinator of the ICMA Senior Advisor program and a Florida senior advisor in the Tampa Bay area.

In 2013, an ICMA-appointed committee changed the program name to Senior Advisors to better describe the role and its primary emphasis on providing advice and support to members. The committee also strengthened the program guidelines for its participants. It’s important to note that senior advisors are volunteers. We are not consultants and do not respond to RFPs or receive any compensation from the local governments we assist. (Although I was once gifted a city coffee mug from a city council after assisting with their goal-setting process.) Senior advisors are bound by the ICMA Code of Ethics and take very seriously this ethical commitment, even as retired managers. Within the program guidelines and agreements between ICMA and state

The Senior Advisor program is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, with 112 senior advisors in 30 states, yet we often find that many folks aren’t aware of this tremendous service we offer to ICMA members.

associations, senior advisors provide support in whatever ways are needed in their state. In Florida, that can include working through the Florida League of Cities or Association of Counties to provide support for smaller local governments with annual goal setting and strategic planning. As we well know, a stable elected body makes for a more comfortable tenure for city/county managers. In that regard, Florida senior advisors are also called upon to present on form of government (representing ICMA/FCCMA as “local government experts”) and to work with smaller communities (under 2,500 in population) on city manager recruitment.

A large part of our efforts is support of the Managers in Transition (MIT) program. As senior advisors, we have confidential conversations with MITs on issues they are facing, whether it be communications with an elected body, transitioning in a new mayor or councilmember, or career advice. We also work with the ICMA coaching

program, CoachConnect, and we support ICMA student chapters at local universities.

This past program year, the ICMA support staff and I have been updating policies and guidelines for senior advisors, recruiting new senior advisors, and improving the process of reporting our activities quarterly to state associations and ICMA. We have established several important goals for 2025:

• Increasing the awareness among ICMA members of the availability of senior advisors as sounding boards on issues.

If you’re an ICMA member who is retiring soon, consider becoming a senior advisor.

• Strengthening our support of ICMA student Chapters.

• Providing training to senior advisors on current issues facing our members and our communities.

• Strengthening ties to the ICMA Coaching program (10 of our members were certified as ICMA coaches last year at the annual conference).

• Ensuring that we support members in transition in their efforts (resume review, interview techniques, and personal support).

We are also developing a central depositary of best practices in each of our 30 states, which then can then be utilized by other states. This will include best practices on topics such as MIT support, charter review presentations on local government structure and the council-manager plan,

orientation programs for new managers, and recruitment assistance guidelines.

We may seem small—only 112 senior advisors to cover 30 participating states—but our ranks include former ICMA presidents and executive board members, state presidents, former ICMA credentialing and ethics committee members, and ICMA award recipients. A number of senior advisors have achieved ICMA life membership, some with 40-plus years in local government management.

So, if you’re an ICMA member who is retiring soon, consider becoming a senior advisor. Apply through your state association, who will then submit your application to ICMA. And if you’re a first-time manager, an MIT, working with a challenging elected body in a new community, or want coaching assistance or a professional mentor, senior advisors stand by ready to assist you! You can find more information through your state association or see the full list of senior advisors for each state at icma.org/senioradvisorlist. In addition, if you’re attending the ICMA Annual Conference in Pittsburgh, you can find us in the Senior Advisor area of the ICMA member pavilion, where we can give you more information on the program. We look forward to working with you!

PROFILES OF LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT IN ACTION

“Being a Credentialed Manager is an important reminder that just as the work in our communities is never complete, neither is the work we do to learn, grow and be better versions of ourselves. Reflecting on my training and development and having to plan the year ahead is a great annual practice and the credential gives me a unique opportunity to do just that.”

Tony Mazzucco

Town Manager

Norwood, MA

Credentialed since October 2015

Demonstrate your commitment to professional development and lifelong learning. Join the growing number of those who have earned the ICMA-CM designation.

ICMA Credentialed Managers are viewed with growing distinction by local governing bodies and progressive, civically engaged communities. For more information, visit icma.org/credentialedmgr

The Voluntary Credentialing Program Celebrates 20 Years! View a list of credentialed managers and candidates at icma.org/credentialed

How to Build Trust with Your Staff as the ACAO

10 suggestions to consider

As the assistant chief administrative officer (ACAO) of an organization, you hold the reins of leadership, steering your team toward success. However, a critical element in this journey is the trust you build with your staff. Trust isn’t given; it’s earned. It’s a vital component that fuels collaboration, innovation, and organizational morale. Here are 10 tried and tested ways that have helped me establish trust with my teams throughout my public service career:

1. Be Transparent.

Transparency is the foundation of trust. Your employees need to feel informed about the organization’s direction, successes, challenges, and changes. Regularly share updates through town hall meetings, emails, or newsletters. This open line of communication reduces uncertainty and demonstrates that you value their right to know.

Tip: Implement a monthly all-staff meeting where you discuss your elected officials’ meetings, upcoming projects, and any organizational changes, such as upcoming staff retirements or resignations. Encourage questions and provide honest answers without breaking “executive privilege.”

BY TIPHANIE MAYS

2. Lead by Example.

We’ve all heard the expression “from the top down.” As ACAOs, our behavior sets the tone with our team. Leading by example means that we are exhibiting the qualities that we expect from our team: integrity, accountability, and dedication. When employees see these traits in you, they are more likely to mirror them, creating a culture of trust and respect.

Tip: Show up on time, meet deadlines, and be present (purposefully). Looking back, the moments when I have publicly stated in front of my team that I made a mistake are the moments that I can pinpoint when the pendulum swung toward them gaining trust in me. Never deny your mistakes and always take ownership of them!

3. Empower Your Team.

Trusting your employees with responsibilities shows that you believe in their capabilities. Delegate meaningful tasks and give them the autonomy to execute these tasks in their own way. This empowerment fosters a sense of ownership and commitment to the organization’s goals.

TIPHANIE MAYS is assistant chief administrative officer for Colerain Township, Ohio, USA.

Tip: Assign projects based on your employees’ strengths and allow them to take the lead. Provide guidance but avoid micromanaging. And never, never take the individual credit for work that was done by your team. Always give the credit to your team, even if it was your brainchild.

4. Show Appreciation.

Recognizing and appreciating your employees’ hard work builds trust and loyalty. Acknowledge their contributions, both big and small, and celebrate successes together. This recognition makes employees feel valued and reinforces their importance to the organization.

Tip: If your organization doesn’t have one yet, implement an employee recognition program. Regularly highlight achievements in meetings or internal communications. Want to build cred with the manual laborers? On an unseasonably hot day, get out from behind the desk and anonymously deliver an ice chest full of water/sports drinks to their breakroom for when they return from work sites. Your individual investment will go miles with the crew when they eventually figure out it was you (even when done anonymously, they still figure it out somehow).

5. Listen Actively.

Trust is the invisible currency that drives long-term success.

Active listening demonstrates that you value your team’s opinions and concerns. Create a culture where feedback is welcomed and acted upon. This two-way communication builds a sense of trust as employees feel their voices are heard and respected.

Tip: Hold regular one-on-one meetings with team members. Encourage open dialogue and provide constructive feedback. While you have them in that setting, ask them about any plans they have for the weekend. Get to know them! (This will help achieve #10.)

6. Be Consistent.

Consistency in your actions and decisions builds predictability, which fosters a sense of trust. Employees need to know that your word is reliable and that your behavior will remain steady in various situations. This reliability fosters a stable work environment where trust can thrive.

Tip: Develop clear policies and stick to them. Ensure that your actions align with the values and promises you communicate. It is imperative that you enforce policies fairly across the board and not play favorites. And if you do play favorites, your team will notice, which will destroy the trust you’ve worked so hard to build.

7. Invest in Development.

Show your commitment to your team’s growth by providing opportunities for professional development. When employees see that the organization is willing to invest in their future, they are more likely to invest their trust in the organization.

Tip: Offer training programs, workshops, and opportunities for career advancement. Encourage continuous learning and development. If your agency doesn’t have an internal “leadership academy,” take action and develop one!

8. Handle Mistakes with Grace.

How you deal with mistakes significantly impacts trust. Instead of placing blame, approach errors as learning opportunities. This attitude encourages a culture of growth and innovation, where employees feel safe taking calculated risks.

Tip: When mistakes occur, hold a debriefing session to understand what went wrong and how to improve. Focus on solutions rather than assigning blame.

9. Be Authentic.

Authenticity fosters genuine connections. Share your own experiences and challenges that have guided your career path. Authenticity in your leadership style makes you more relatable and trustworthy to your staff.

Tip: Be open about your journey, including both successes and setbacks. Your vulnerability will encourage employees to be more open and authentic themselves. I once made a huge error in my decision making. I made an operational decision without first consulting the staff that it affected directly. Once I realized my error, I had a choice to either dismiss it or own it. It was a tough pill to swallow, but I owned my mistake publicly in a staff meeting. To this day, that team still teases me about it, but it was a moment in my career that I know solidified the trust between my team and me.

10. Build Relationships.

Lastly, personal relationships are the bedrock of trust. Take the time to get to know your employees beyond their job titles in a purposeful manner. Show interest in their personal lives, aspirations, and well-being. These personal connections strengthen the overall trust within your organization.

Tip: Make an effort to remember personal details about your employees and follow up on them. Ask your team about their kids, pets, partner, hobbies, etc.—and be genuinely interested.

Conclusion

Building trust as an ACAO is a continuous journey that requires dedication, transparency, and empathy. By fostering an environment where trust is prioritized, you not only enhance employee morale but also pave the way for a more innovative, collaborative, and successful organization. Trust is the invisible currency that drives long-term success, and as a leader, your role in cultivating it is paramount.

As an MPA student, how has the ICMA Code of Ethics shaped your understanding of what it means to work in local government?

It’s back-to-school time, so ICMA asked two student chapter leaders about the ICMA Code of Ethics and the future of professional local government management.

As a part of ICMA’s Next Generation Initiatives, student chapters introduce and integrate students into the local government management profession and familiarize them with members, resources, and the Code.

SHARE YOUR STORY

Josh Starr

Student Chapter President, University of South Florida

Pursuing MPA, expected graduation date 2026/2027

“In 1924, Americans listened to President Calvin Coolidge on the home radio, Ford Motor Company produced Model T’s, and jazz played in dance halls. One hundred years later, Americans watch presidents on handheld devices, Ford Motor Company produces the F-150, and pop music blares in nightclubs. The ICMA Code of Ethics (adopted in 1924 at the Montreal Conference) turns 100 this year and enshrines an ethical framework through changing times. Young professionals growing in the field must lead in a manner that honors the public, our mentors and pioneers, and posterity. We must pursue public service, not for power or financial gain, but for purpose and legacy. One day, my generation will pass the torch on to the next. Let us do so with confidence that we upheld the timeless qualities associated with good leadership, ethical character, proper management, and integrous service.”

Zamaria Ball

Student Chapter President,

Georgia Southern University

Pursuing MPA, expected graduation date 2025

“The ICMA Code of Ethics has been a pillar for me as a local government professional. The Code creates a clear standard that is crucial for maintaining integrity and accountability. When everyone is committed to following the same ethical guidelines, it not only fosters a culture of trust and transparency, but also makes it easier to identify and address issues when things go wrong. Adhering to our shared ethical standards ensures our actions align with our values and the best interests of the communities we serve.”

In celebration of the 100th anniversary, ICMA invites members to reflect on how the Code has influenced you personally and professionally. icma.org/ethicsstory

CONTACT US

ICMA encourages members seeking confidential advice on ethics issues to contact Jessica Cowles, ethics director, at jcowles@icma.org or 202-962-3513. Answers to common ethics issues and questions are also available at icma.org/page/ethics-issues-and-advice.

Sharing Diverse Stories of Career Transition

Updating ICMA’s Guide to Breaking into Local Government

Local government management provides an array of challenges and opportunities that are unique to our profession. These range from budgetary constraints to the complexities of physical and economic development projects, as well as the ever-changing demands of a diverse population.

We wanted to ensure that the stories in the guide featured broad representation so that anyone reading the guide can recognize that there is a place for them in our profession.

Especially for new graduates and mid-career professionals considering a career in local government, these challenges can be daunting. For the last decade, ICMA’s Guide to Breaking into Local Government has served as a valuable tool for those looking to make the leap by providing insight into the profession, case studies with stories from individuals who successfully made the transition, and survey data from individuals who made a career change.

In 2023, ICMA established a task force to update and revise the guide. The task force was made up of members from across the United States who shared the goal of providing a tool that is useful for a variety of audiences, including employers, professional associations, and of course, those looking to start a career in local government.

BY

ANDREW LETSON

As the task force sought new stories to include in the guide, one of the goals was to ensure a diverse group of backgrounds from across ICMA’s membership were represented in the case studies. Case studies include individuals who transitioned from a career in the military, the private sector, nonprofits, state/federal government service, education, and as a student, intern, or fellow. The case studies include individuals who have served in local government for various lengths of time, who started their careers at different levels, and who serve in organizations throughout the United States.

As we work to address the needs of our diverse communities, it is important that our organizations thrive from the strength that diversity provides. We wanted to ensure that the stories in the guide featured broad representation so that anyone reading the guide can recognize that there is a place for them in our profession.

While the challenges facing our communities change over time, there will always be a need for strong professional managers to ensure that local leaders are prepared to make informed decisions and provide leadership to local governments across the country. Achieving this objective requires a diverse array of competent, ethical individuals to step forward and pursue a career in local government. It is the hope of the task force that the updated Guide to Breaking into Local Government will serve another generation who is looking to jump in.

Be on the lookout for more information about the guide, debuting soon!

ANDREW LETSON is county administrator of Meeker County, Minnesota, USA.

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